The Monster's Cure
by bbbbbb100
Summary: Clary and Jonathan have been raised by Valentine in the small cottage in the valley for as long as they can remember. But then one day, Valentine takes it too far, and Clary knows that she must escape with her brother before Valentine turns him into the monster he was always meant to be... *Clabastian, maybe Clace later* There's a lot of buildup in the story so hang with me :)
1. Chapter 1

"What do you think it would have been like if Valentine had brought you up along with me? Would you have loved me?"

"Well, you're my brother. I would have loved you. I would have...had to."

* * *

One wasn't meant to be afraid of one's own brother. In all fairness, a good-sized part of Clary really did love Jonathan. But whenever she looked into his black, black eyes, an unsettling chill ran up her spin. She was sure that these thoughts were wrong on so many different levels, but what could she do about it? For the most part, she ignored the feeling, but sometimes, she just couldn't.

Once, she had walked into his room, meaning to retrieve something or other of hers, and came upon him prodding something with a stele that she supposed must have once been a squirrel, trying to mark runes on it. Every time the adamas rod touched the mutilated skin, the poor thing jerked sickeningly. Clary had screamed, and Jonathan had just looked up and _smiled_ , as if he was delighted that she'd walked in on his sick experiment. She'd run out of the room almost in tears, sure that she'd never be able to sleep again. But strangely enough, Jonathan had come to her aide as she sobbed out in the meadow, comforting her until she calmed down. "What were you doing?" She'd whispered, once she could talk again. He had remained silent for so long that she'd thought he wasn't going to respond, and then he spoke in a tone that sounded eerily close to regret. "I wanted to see if no other being could truly bear the runes besides Shadowhunters. I hadn't believed Valentine when he told me the first time. Now I realize what a fool I'd been." Clary had known that he was pretending to feel sorry for what he'd done so she would be content, and she'd let him get away with it. Next to nothing would make Jonathan feel anything close to remorse, a fact she had accepted from the very beginning.

"Clary!" Jonathan calls now, disrupting Clary from her "reading" of some dusty old book or other that Valentine had demanded that she study. Eager for a respite from the mind-numbing dullness of the tome, Clary jumped up with the lithe grace drilled into her since she could walk, and bounded towards the sound of his voice. She quite literally ran into him in the kitchen, but fortunately, he caught her with amazing speed, saving them both from a near disaster. So much for her grace.

"Easy, tiger." He says, and although his tone is cool, his eyes glimmer with just the barest hint of amusement.

"Sorry. _A History Of Demons And Their Effects On Shadowhunter Society_ does terrible things to the soul." She explained breathlessly. "You're lucky Father doesn't make you read."

A dark look flashed over Jonathan's face, instantly replaced with his usual controlled expression. Clary touched his sharp cheekbone gently, anxious that she'd made him upset.

"Are you okay? Trust me; reading isn't all it's cracked up to be." She tilted her head in thought. "Though, I can't imagine it was ever cracked up to be much in the first place."

"It's nothing. I only remembered something I'd forgotten to do." Jonathan dismissed it, and though Clary could tell that he was lying, she let it go.

"So, what did you call me here for?"

"It's time to do drills, or did you forget?"

"Oh." She pouted, her bottom lip sticking out just slightly. "I think I might go back to reading then."

He smirked. "It's not all that bad."

"If twenty miles on uneven, hilly terrain in the heat 'isn't that bad' for you, then I don't know what is. And you always beat me anyhow. What's the point anymore?" It was true. No matter how hard she pushed herself, Jonathan always won by a landslide at any physical challenge they were faced with. It was downright infuriating.

"It's not a race, little sister. If it was, I would let you win every time."

She snorted at that. Experience told her that very little would stand in the way between Jonathan and what he wanted, ever. "Okay, sure. I'm going back to the study to suffer the lesser of two dull evils."

He stared at her with a curious expression for a moment, and before she had time to decipher it, he picked her up like she weighed no more than a pound and sprinted out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

"Put me down!" she shrieked, struggling to break his viselike grip on her. He only laughed and kept running at an almost unearthly pace. Eventually, he dumped her on the grass when they were far enough away from the cottage, and stared at her, amused, as she shamefully picked herself up off the ground.

"See, now I've saved you from your dull fate. Feel free to give me a token of your gratitude." He teases.

An idea sparked in Clary's mind, and she smiled. "I guess I do owe you." She said angelically, and walked up to Jonathan as if she were to hug him for "rescuing" her. At the last second before they embraced, she shoved him hard and took off running in the opposite direction. "ReadysetGO!" she yelled over her shoulder, laughing wildly, already reflecting on her delightful prank. The look on Jonathan's face right after she'd pushed him made the long run ahead of her seem almost bearable.

What an idiot she was, thinking twenty miles in any situation could be "bearable", Clary thought to herself not much later, after running far too long and far too hard. And there was still a good chunk of the race left to go, which wasn't helping her dismal spirits. At least Jonathan hadn't passed her yet, a fact that she considered some sort of miracle. She hoped that he wasn't letting her win, though that didn't seem in Jonathan's nature. Both siblings hated to give or receive pity, and Clary hoped that that fact hadn't changed.

As she capped off the twenty mile mark, she was panting so hard she was afraid her lungs might explode out of her chest. Sweat poured off of her in buckets, and she collapsed on the ground to stare up at the clear blue sky, her muscles exhausted. Jonathan walked up to her lying form and peered down at her with a mildly concerned expression. She was disappointed to see that he wasn't even breathing hard, confirming her earlier suspicions.

"You…you let me…win." She panted, holding her hands up to block the sun. She got up, her body protesting wildly, and pointed an accusing finger at him.

"Why did…you do…that?"

He bowed his head in pretend shame, and shrugged his shoulders. "You were having your moment. I didn't want to ruin that."

"Oh." She says, surprised. Even though it made her feel hugely inadequate that she was so much worse than him he had to try to _not_ beat her, she couldn't help but notice that that was the nicest thing she could remember Jonathan doing in quite a long time.

"I guess you proved me wrong then. I thought you'd never put me above your pride." Clary confided, and then smiled. "Although you can't blame me. Your pride is quite massive, after all." She laughed.

He shook his head exasperatedly and began to walk home. As he brushed by Clary, he murmured something so soft that she was left wondering if he said it at all.

"For you, I would raise Hell."


	3. Chapter 3

It was a quiet walk home. Clary tried to start conversation with Jonathan several times, but he either responded in monosyllables or not at all, clearly lost in thought. After a while, Clary stopped trying and a comfortable silence falls over the pair. Or, as comfortable as it could be. The uneasy sensation was barely a tickle at the back of Clary's brain now, though it was omnipresent, and just strong enough to have her always on edge. She was unnerved by how rawly instinctual the feeling is, which means that there is something deep inside of her that is programmed to be on her guard around her brother. As much as it pained her, she cannot easily ignore her instincts. Is it possible that there could be something wrong with Jonathan? She dismisses the thought as quick as it came, disgusted by it. There couldn't be anything wrong with her brother. The thoughtful, sweet boy that she'd discovered out in the meadow after their run couldn't possibly have anything bad in him.

 _But then again,_ a nasty voice inside of her spoke against her will, _he can be a bit…odd…at times. Like the squirrel incident—_

"No!" Clary says aloud, a little louder than she intended. Jonathan turns around. "Are you okay?"

"More than fine." Clary assures him. For a moment, she hesitates, debating whether she should ask him if there _was_ something messed up with him. Almost against her will, the words pour out of her mouth. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

She couldn't do it. It was too painful to entertain the possibility of her brother being _bad._

"I was just wondering…do you know when father will be home?"

"Valentine," he began, stressing the word, "said he'd be gone for about a week this time, so probably in the next three days or so."

"But that's _ages_ away." Clary complained. "I still don't see why the other boy that he spends so much time taking care of can't just come over to our cottage and we can all live together. I could have another brother."

"What, are you saying that I'm not good enough?" he smiled.

She laughed. "Not at all. It just gets a little lonely when you and Valentine go off together and I'm left with nobody. Plus, you spend all of that extra time training, and I don't see you for days at a time when you go off on those trips with Valentine."

His jaw clenched and he started to walk faster, enough that Clary had to jog to keep up with him.

"You don't want to go on those trips with Valentine. I wouldn't let you."

Clary felt stung by this. "Why ever not? What do you do during them?"

Jonathan turns his head to Clary, and his face softened slightly. "Don't take it the wrong way, little sister. It's just…it would ruin you."

"If you can take it, I can take it." Clary lied. She knew that Jonathan was physically better than her in almost every way possible, which would let him be able to handle much higher levels of physical stress without cracking. But Clary was curious about this, and she wanted more information.

Jonathan opened his mouth to say something, then reconsidered and closed it.

"I wish I could be like you." Clary half-whispered, not expecting Jonathan to hear it. But he did, and he whipped around and grabbed her by her shoulders. He looks almost scared, which is an expression Clary could've never imagined him wearing. He leans in close and spoke forcefully enough to make her shrink back. "Don't _ever_ say that again, alright? You…I'm nothing compared to you. _Nothing._ "

She couldn't help it, a short, spiteful laugh erupted from her. "Ha! Can't you see what's right in front of you, brother? You're faster, stronger, and just all-around _better_ than me. If anything, I'm nothing to you."

Rage flickered across his face; deep, uncontrollable rage, and then he slapped Clary, so fast that she didn't even realize it until her cheek began to flame and sting. She stared at him, uncomprehending, and then a world of hurt filled her jade green eyes as she began to understand what he'd done. She turns around, not knowing what else to do, and runs back to the cottage.

She didn't get very far, however, before she heard the heart-wrenching scream echo behind her, filling the valley with its misery. But she didn't look back. Never, in all her life, had Jonathan ever laid a hand on her. Not that the mark on her cheek hurt particularly bad, but the wounds to the soul are always the ones hardest felt.


	4. Chapter 4

Jonathan finds her in her room, staring blankly at the unpainted wooden wall. She didn't cry. She hadn't cried for as long as she can remember. Why cry when you were surrounded by merciless people?

"Go away." She spat with all her fury. "I don't ever want to see your face again."

He didn't go away, and there was a long, heavy silence before he replied.

"I don't blame you. Clary…You don't know how sorry I am. I was frustrated that you couldn't see all that you are, and I handled it the only way I knew how, the only way I was ever taught."

"But what kind of brother strikes out against his own sister? We're supposed to be a team…aren't we?" Her voice quavered ever so slightly. When he didn't respond, she shook her head and stood up, walking out of the room. "I knew there was something wrong with you."

"Wait, what?" he exclaimed, jumping up behind Clary.

"Nothing." She muttered. She didn't feel like explaining the strange feeling that had been with her all through childhood.

"No, tell me." He demanded.

That was when Clary lost it. She spun back around, beyond angry with him for pushing her when he already knew she was close to her limit. "No, I won't tell you. I wouldn't want to anger you again. Who knows how you would hurt me this time?" She fled from her room, ignoring the crushed expression on Jonathan's face. Later it would hurt, but not now. She wouldn't let it hurt right now.


	5. Chapter 5

Days passed, and Clary distracted herself with rigorous training day and night, studying books upon books until her brain was too exhausted to think, and, best of all, drawing in her well-loved sketchbook that looked as if it were about to fall apart at any moment.

One day, Clary sat down in the meadow, calmed by the gently waving grass under the lightly clouded sky, and started to draw. As usual, she let the pencil guide her, but this time, her picture turned out different. There was Jonathan as usual, portrayed with his white-blond hair falling all around his almost too-chiseled face, with grand ebony wings rising above him to match his eyes. She often included him in her drawings, as he had the ideal countenance for her sketches. But now, there appeared to be another boy that she'd never seen before, posed in battle against Jonathan. Everywhere that her brother was dark and shadowy, the other boy was golden, a bright, luminescent tone that seemed to light up the entire page. He was beautiful, and entirely too perfect. She frowned. That perfection made him seem cold and detached, much like her brother, which simply wouldn't do for someone who practically radiated light. She erased part of one of the boy's teeth, making it appear chipped. There. _Now_ he wasn't quite as flawless. But who was he? Clary had never sketched anyone but Jonathan before, and she was unused to the experience.

Shaking her head, she gave up on drawing. It wasn't doing her any good to sit here, studying a boy who wasn't even real. Of course, even if he was in existence somewhere, she could never hope to see him. She had been at this cottage for sixteen years now, and Valentine still showed no intention of freeing them from this valley anytime soon.

She knew that she would have to escape soon. She just needed to find out _how._ The mountains were far too steep for her to scale (she had tried and failed to climb them on more than one occasion), and the valley seemed to continue on forever into the distance, a fact that she well knew from experience.

When she was about eight, she had declared to Jonathan that she was going to run away. Valentine had been on one of his extensive trips, and by the time he returned, she would already be too far gone for him to ever hope to catch her. Jonathan had just kind of smiled and nodded, as if he'd known something that she hadn't. But her eight-year-old brain had paid no attention to this, so she packed enough food and water for a week in her leather pack, and taken off.

It had started out great. She'd really thought that she was escaping from Valentine and that horribly boring cottage. Her only regret was not bringing Jonathan. They could've gotten free together, and done whatever they wanted! Oh, well. She would come back for him when she had escaped herself, she had figured.

She'd started to worry when she'd been "escaping" for five days and still saw no end to the valley. Surely nothing material could last this long without the slightest change. And that was when she'd realized how she'd been so completely fooled. She had thrown a temper tantrum when she realized the cruel trick that had been played on her, but as there was no one to hear her, she'd eventually turned around to go back to the cottage. Sure enough, she'd accomplished what it had previously taken her five days to do in a matter of hours. Jonathan had been obediently doing his drills outside, which made her feel a twinge of guilt. While one child had been doing everything their father had asked him to do without question, the other had been running away. He noticed her approach, and jogged up to her.

"Did you have fun, little sister?" he'd asked, smirking.

"Why didn't you tell me that the valley was a glamour?" she'd asked, frustrated to the point of anger. He'd only laughed, which had only added to her wrath. "If I had told you, would that have really stopped you from trying?"

Clary's expression quickly became sheepish. "I guess not."

He'd smiled down at her. "And that is why I love you, little sister."

She grinned stupidly, reminiscing on the fond memory. Jonathan had smiled a lot more back then. She wondered what had happened to sour his mood since then.

Even though he'd slapped her not too long ago, something she was far from forgiving him for, she missed Jonathan like she'd miss her right arm. How could she not? He was her other half, the one person in the world that would ever be able to fully complete her. She hadn't seen him at all since Valentine had returned roughly a week ago, and it was killing her, more than she'd like to admit.

To attempt to get her mind off of Jonathan, she headed inside to the weapons room that took up the majority of the relatively small house, and drew her favorite weapons: two twin daggers, each razor sharp and lethal. Their names were Nyx and Hemera, named after the goddesses of Greek mythology that personified night and day.

She went back outside and got back into the feel of the daggers, pretending that there was any number of demons attacking her that she stabbed, sliced, and mutilated.

Sometimes Valentine would bring in actual demons for her and Jonathan to practice on, but most of the time she went against either Valentine or her brother. So far, she'd only beaten Jonathan once, but she was besting her father more and more these days. He'd praised her every time she had, of course, but she'd begun to see the fear in his eyes whenever he approached her, and so she had decided to let him beat her more again.

She hadn't wanted her father to be afraid of her like he was of Jonathan. And it had paid off. Valentine and Clary shared a much closer relationship than he did with his son, and as a result, Valentine told her more things. Things about the world outside the valley, about the Circle of long times past, of how his best friend had been turned into a werewolf, and, most interesting to Clary, about her mother, Jocelyn.

Clary continued to swipe at the empty air with Nyx and Herema, but her mind wandered elsewhere, to the story of her and Jonathan's mysterious mother.

As soon as Jonathan had been born, Jocelyn had hated him, shunned him so Valentine was forced to care for Jonathan all on his own. Valentine had been confused as to how his wife could be so cruel to her own child, but he kept on loving her, believing she would come around eventually.

Then, one day, he'd caught her sneaking away from their house. Heartbroken, he'd begged and pleaded her to stay, and finally, she'd consented. Seven months later, Jocelyn had given birth to Clary. Clary had realized as this story had first been told to her that the time span meant that Jocelyn had attempted to escape with Clary inside her, which meant if Jocelyn had been successful, Clary would have grown up probably in the mundane world, away from Valentine…and more importantly, Jonathan. The very thought of it made her nauseous. What a miserable existence she'd nearly been sentenced to!

Soon after Clary had been born, Jocelyn escaped again, and this time, she got away with it. Valentine had been depressed for years after her abandonment, but he'd still had two kids to take care of, so he moved to this cottage to recover from her betrayal and raise his children.

Clary sympathized with him, of course, but one piece didn't fit into the story at all: the boy that Valentine spent two thirds of his time with, in some other place far away. If he really was that depressed, then why didn't he just keep all of the kids together, in one place? She'd questioned him about it, and his answer had been extremely cryptic. "Jonathan would have destroyed him."

"Clary?"

It was Jonathan, as if Clary had summoned him from her thoughts. Quickly, she sheathed her daggers, and prepared to inject her voice with venom, looking up to face him.

"What are _you_ —oh, Jonathan." She breathed in shock. It took her eyes a while to adjust to the sight, for she had never, in all of her years, could have imagined this image before her.

Jonathan was badly beat up, a deep, still-bleeding cut right above his left eye and several slashes that crisscrossed all over, a swollen shut, blackened eye, and too many bruises to count. And that was just his face. He was bare-chested, and she could see the full damage to his torso, which set her head spinning on its own. But that wasn't the worst of it.

"Turn around." She ordered, seeing something not at all pleasant seeping around his shoulder. He made a face and protested in a weak voice. "Clary, I don't think you should—" she spun him around…and sucked in a loud, sharp breath to keep from screaming. It was a revolting sight that made bile rise in her throat. There were six open gashes on his back that sizzled and _pulsed_ unnaturally. She knew what they were, though she wished she didn't.

"Demon metal." She stated with a sick, dreading feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach like sludge. That meant he would have to live with these marks for the rest of his life, since no _iratze_ in this world or the next could heal them. She didn't dare touch them; she was sure they already hurt enough. "What happened?" she whispered, her eyes shining with tears that she'd vowed she would never shed.

"What do you think? Valentine happened."


	6. Chapter 6

He was playing it off as though it didn't hurt, but the shaking in his hands betrayed him. "I'm going to kill him, Clary." He said darkly.

At the moment, Clary wanted to kill Valentine too, but she shook her head, walking around to face him. "You can't. He's the only other family member we have left."

"Who cares? I only need you." He met her eyes then, and Clary's breath was taken away by the naked sincerity she saw there.

Shaking her head, she gathered her scattered thoughts and started to walk to the cottage. "I'm going to get a stele. We'll discuss this later, when you're…better." She hesitated on the last word, and Jonathan caught it.

"It's okay, Clary. I know I'll never be completely healed." He said with a grim smile, gesturing to his back. "And by the way, Valentine specifically instructed me not to use an iratze."

Clary slowly turned around and drew herself up to appear somewhat taller, her eyes shining with a dangerous light. "Well, you're not going to be using one, are you?"

Jonathan broke out in one of his rare genuine smiles, and Clary's brow creased with the warring emotions inside of her. She already felt ashamed of her treacherous words against her father, but at the same time, there was little that Clary wouldn't do to get her brother to smile like that. She began to grin back, then decided against it and fled to the cottage.

As soon as the stele touched Jonathan's ivory skin, he flinched. Clary sucked in a breath. It took all of her willpower to continue drawing. That little flinch spoke legions about his pain to Clary, more so than any wound she'd seen on him so far. No matter what, Jonathan never showed pain. That flinch meant Valentine had broken him on some deep, psychological level.

Fury at Valentine bubbled up inside her, and she struggled to retain her rationality. Jonathan already had enough anger for the both of them. She didn't need to add to that cesspool. She finished the iratze and stepped back, watching in satisfaction as his wounds closed up and faded. She didn't want to see his back. She already knew that it would look the exact same, not touched at all by the angelic rune. There was no use putting a bandage on it either, since the demonic essence in the scars would disintegrate the cloth immediately.

"So tell me," Jonathan spoke suddenly, watching his skin return to its pale flawlessness, "why you're being so calm about this. Doesn't it matter to you that your brother has been permanently scarred by your father?"

"I am nowhere near calm on the inside, believe me. It's just…why didn't you fight back? You're much stronger than him, and you know it."

"He said it was a lesson for me to learn about the perils of obedience, and so I stayed. Now I realize what a fool I am. I showed him obedience, and he punished me for it. Just like he said he would."

He looked so defeated, so miserable standing there that Clary couldn't take it anymore. On an impulse that came from some instinct deeply ingrained in her, she reached out and hugged him for the first time in as long as she could remember. For a moment Jonathan did not respond, stunned with shock. Then, his arms wrapped around Clary, completely encircling her, and she forgot that he had whip marks on his back that would never heal, forgot that their cruel father had trapped them in a valley for all of their lives, forgot—

MONSTER. MONSTER.

She jerked away from Jonathan and moved backwards frantically, still chanting the word.

She sat down hard and looked up at Jonathan, his arms still outstretched, hugging her ghost. "Monster?" He asked.

"I—I'm sorry, Jonathan. I can't help it, sometimes it just comes in jolts and I have no choice but to get away. I really do try to block it but…" she rambles, trailing off when she realizes how useless those words are. Jonathan stumbles up to her, lacking his usual grace, and sits down beside her.

"No, you're the last one who should be sorry. It's been me, it's always been me, and I've just been too much of a coward to tell you." He swallowed hard and closed his eyes so his long, white blond lashes brush his cheekbones, bracing himself for something terrible.

"Clary, I'm—"

"JONATHAN!" Valentine bellows. They both snap their heads up to see Valentine making his way to them, barely a speck against the green of the meadow.

"Come on." Clary says, and she takes off running towards Valentine. Jonathan, still repulsed by the very sight of his father, follows a little more slowly.


	7. Chapter 7

"Clary." Valentine says when they are face to face, his voice carrying a hint of menace that makes the hair on the back of Clary's neck rise. "Why is my son healed? I gave him specific orders—"

"I healed him." Clary confessed, her expression daring Valentine to get mad at her.

Instead, his eyes fill with disappointment, which is much worse than anything else he could have dealt.

"I knew that I could never trust Jonathan, but you Clary…you I counted on." She wilted under his hard stare. "I was just caring for my brother, father. I didn't know—"

"What's going on here?" Jonathan joined the two, his eyes narrowing.

Valentine's gaze turned to ice and lost what little emotion there was when he'd talked to Clary. "I was just asking Clary why you are healed of _almost_ all of your wounds." he said, clearly wanting to provoke Jonathan. A sick feeling settled in Clary's gut. This wasn't going to end well, she could tell.

Jonathan clenched his jaw, his rage building inside of him already. Clary silently pleaded with him not to explode. Valentine might be an ass, but she didn't want her father to die. Needed him to not die. But it wasn't because of any lingering familial love anymore. She'd learned from Jonathan's whip marks that her father really didn't have a heart after all. No, she wanted something else from Valentine, something she'd secretly wanted all along.

Jonathan met her gaze, and slowly, slowly began to relax. He turned his head back to Valentine, breathing deeply and evenly. "She healed me. I forced her to." He lied smoothly.

Their father chuckled in amusement, his dark eyes glinting with malice. "Ah, it is quite amusing to hear such poorly constructed lies coming from your mouth, Jonathan. I must admit, I hadn't thought you capable of compassion because of the—"

"Stop aggravating him, Valentine." Clary interrupted. She could see Jonathan's face now, which frightened her more than she cared to admit. With that eerily calm expression, Clary could picture her brother burning down the world and laughing while doing it.

Valentine narrowed his eyes at her, and she realized that she couldn't make him too mad. If he became cruel enough, Jonathan would kill him, which wouldn't do. He needed to survive, for reasons Jonathan had not been told of yet. She had to play her cards carefully.

"Why should I stop?" Valentine sneered. "The two of you disobeyed my very clear orders, a blatant sign of disrespect. Now you speak out against me. When will you stop? I am well within my rights to punish the both of you dearly for this."

"We are all you have left of Jocelyn." Clary spoke, choosing her words cautiously.

"Would you really want to destroy us— _me_ to the point where I would never trust you again, never again call you my father? For I fear you have already pushed Jonathan to there."

She did not expect what happened next, or rather, the series of events that all followed in rapid succession.

"Never," began Valentine in a low, menacing voice, " _ever_ speak the name of my wife in my presence!"

He swept his large hand back as if to strike her, but before he could, a blur that she vaguely realized was Jonathan tackled him.

"Jonathan!" she screamed, and, not knowing what else to do, she jumped into the fight. Someone punched her in the mouth, and she kicked someone that she hoped was Valentine in the groin. It was a dirty move and she didn't feel happy about it, but she desperately needed to separate them.

They emerged, all alive but wounded, with Clary covering Valentine in a way so that Jonathan would have to hurt her to get to his father.

"Don't you see, my boy?" Valentine rumbled from behind Clary in amusement. "Even now, Clary chooses me over you. I suppose no amount of good times shared will ever make a monster lovable." Jonathan's carved-from-ice expression did not change, but Clary could detect the faintest undercurrent of hurt in his obsidian eyes. He truly believed that Clary cared for Valentine more than she did for him. She wanted to hurt her brother for ever thinking that that could be true.

Valentine started to talk again, this time to Clary. "Unfortunately, my daughter, your ever-present loyalty to me does not waver my decision. You need to leave this valley immediately, before you can do any more damage here."


	8. Chapter 8

"What?" Clary asked, not believing what she'd heard.

"Are you deaf, child? I said that you are to leave, and enter the mundane world."

"But I'm not human. I'm a Shadowhunter." She said stupidly, at a complete loss.

"Of course, of course. I wouldn't dream of diluting my bloodline in such a vile way. Imagine the horror, Morgenstern having to settle with a mere mundane to continue the bloodline." He shivered in disgust. "No, no, I will arrange for some institute or another to take you on. It shouldn't be too difficult. I do have lots of connections from still-loyal Circle members."

She couldn't believe it. Everything she'd ever wanted was being handed to her on a silver platter. There was just one thing missing: Jonathan.

"What about my brother?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"He will stay here, of course, and continue to train without you weighing him down."

"I do not weigh him down." Clary snapped indignantly. If anything, they made each other stronger, not weaker…right? She risked a sideways glance at Jonathan, who was stubbornly refusing to look at her.

"I can see from what's played out here that Jonathan has developed a rather unfortunate…weakness for you, which was not part of my plans. To be the soldier that I've bred him to be, Jonathan must have no weaknesses, no possible distractions from his goal."

"What do you mean, 'soldier that you bred him to be'?" Clary asked, her curiosity just barely besting her desire to hit Valentine with something, hard.

Valentine turned to Jonathan, a flicker of a smile lighting on his face. "You did not tell her, Jonathan? You wished to retain the relationship between the two of you that much?" he shook his head, sighing. Jonathan remained stoic, not answering the rhetorical question.

"Love never fails to surprise me. Well, now that she'll be going away, I think it's high time we tell her, don't you think? In the meantime, I have an errand to run that will take but a few hours. When I get back, I expect to meet you two outside my room in the cottage. Do _not_ disappoint me on this." He narrowed his eyes at the pair, then turned on his heel and ran off towards the cottage.

Neither of them commented that his behavior was odd, for it was not when it came to Valentine. He was always coming or leaving with them, and they were used to it by now.

Clary met Jonathan's gaze across the small area that separated them.

"What did he want you to tell me?" she asked.

"Do you really want to know?"

"There is a world of difference between what I want to know and what I must know."

Jonathan slumped in defeat, a first for him, and walked over to Clary. He placed his hands on her shoulders as if to steady himself, and began to talk.

"Clary, just so you know, I won't blame you if you hate me for this. I deserve to be hated by someone like you." Clary opens her mouth to protest, but Jonathan raises a long, slender finger to her lips, effectively silencing her.

"When I was in our mother's womb, Valentine was just learning about the effects of angel and demon blood on Shadowhunters. They were very powerful and enhanced his physical capabilities tenfold, but they only lasted on him for a few minutes, nothing more. He figured that they would have much more long-lasting effects on beings that were still being created, so the blood would become a part of its essence, inescapably entangled in its genetic makeup."

This was where he broke off for a moment and turned his head away, but Clary felt she already knew where the story was going.

"Oh…" she said. The pieces were finally all coming together. He returned his gaze to hers and held it.

"I'm part demon, Clary. Valentine fed our mother demon blood when I was still being made. I'm…I'm a monster."

His black eyes studied her, looking for any sign of distress. But she wasn't upset.

"It makes sense now." She sighed. Of course that voice inside her warned against him, because some piece of Jonathan was a demon, the thing she'd been trained all her life to fight against. But she could see no demon in her brother. He was just the same as he'd always been; only now she had an explanation for the one thing that pushed them apart.

But he didn't see that she understood, that she wasn't disgusted by him.

"Jonathan, you don't—" she began to reason, anything to wipe that sick emotion off of his face.

She was cut off when her brother jerked her towards him, tightly wrapping his arms around her waist.

She yelped in surprise, and looked at him in confusion. What she saw there made her blood run cold. He stared at her with an expression that she could only describe as love. But this wasn't the type of love that existed between a brother and a sister. This was something else, something darker, and more possessive.

She pushed him away, suddenly frantic to escape. Surprisingly, he let her go.

"What was that?" Clary asked, not bothering to hide the tremor in her voice. She tried to assure herself that it was all in her head, but it was no use. She knew what she'd seen.

"I don't know, Clary. Oh God…" he broke off, running his fingers through his blond hair in distress.

"The demon in me wants you." He finally said, the words almost forcing themselves out of his lips. "But the part of me that's still your brother, the human part of me…" He growled, and strode off angrily.

She watched as he screamed in frustration to the valley, kicking the earth wildly. It made a terrible, beautiful scene: the red, setting sun making the grass appear orange and Jonathan's hair like a fiery halo.

He drew a knife from somewhere within his gear and studied it for a moment, as if the blade held all the secrets to the world if he looked at it long enough. Then he threw it into the scarlet sky. It went amazingly far—but of course it did, since the demon blood gave him such enhanced abilities, far above those of a normal Shadowhunter. He watched it fly, and then walked back towards Clary, looking broken.

"I try to fight the demon off every day. You're the only reason why so much of my humanity remains. That's why Valentine wants you gone, so I can become the perfect, emotionless soldier." He broke off and slowly breathed in and out, trying, Clary realized, to calm himself.

"When you're gone…I don't know what will happen to me, Clary. Maybe the memory of you will be enough to keep me human, but I don't think so." He whispered, his voice trembling with emotion.

"Perhaps it's for the best. I'm starting to doubt whether being human is worth all of this…pain." He shuddered, and grabbed himself, his nails gouging into his pale skin.

When Clary saw what utter misery her sibling was wrapped up in, she didn't hesitate in running up to him and cupping his face in her hands, wanting desperately to erase his pain.

"No. You're not giving up on being human, and I'm not giving up on you."

He turned his head away, and Clary's mind raced. Surely it wouldn't hurt to tell him, right? She grabbed him, forcing him to look at her again.

"I've got a plan. A way for us to escape, together."


	9. Chapter 9

Valentine was already gone when they returned to the cottage, but that was expected. Still, there was no time to waste.

The pair rushed up the creaky, seldom-used stairs that their father had drilled into them never to venture up. Of course they each had, and each had gotten into no small amount of trouble for it, not to mention a good amount of injuries. After their individual misadventures, neither had dared to go upstairs again. But this time, they were united, which they hoped would make them stronger.

"Crap." Clary whispered in frustration, pushing the small white door to no avail. "I should've known he would cast a spell on it. I've got a stele, hold on…" She said, beginning to search her pockets.

By the time she'd found it, Jonathan was already tracing a rune into the painted wood.

"I had it." She muttered, shoving her stele back into her jeans.

"But I had it faster." Jonathan smirked, and Clary couldn't help but smile back. They were siblings again. All was well, for now.

Jonathan finished drawing the open rune, but it only sparked and sizzled out. They both stared at it in disbelief, too stunned to do anything for a moment.

"Damn it." Jonathan growled. "He must've had a warlock in here to do something this powerful."

"Here, let me try." Clary said, ignoring Jonathan's protests as she began to draw.

When she pulled away, something different happened. The door began to glow, increasing in brightness by the second.

Jonathan realized what was going to happen a millisecond before she did, and threw her aside just in time to save her from the door, thrown so violently open that it launched off its hinges and hit the wall behind them with an earsplitting _bang_.

Clary winced. "That's gonna leave a mark."

Jonathan examined the blast marks on the doorframe with awe. "How on earth did you do this?" He asked, bewildered.

"I don't know. But we don't have time to find out. Valentine will be back soon, and we still haven't found the portal." Clary said, getting up off of the floor. Jonathan wandered into the attic, and sucked in a breath.

"I don't think we'll have much trouble finding it."

"What? Why?" Clary asked, running up to come in beside him. "I don't—oh."

Evidently, Valentine had figured that the combined threat of going upstairs and the enchanted door would be enough to stop them from ever finding this room, for positioned in the center of the dusty, cobwebbed area was a portal, standing about a man and a half high and shining with a bluish radiance that lit up the entire room. It looked like a door, with glowing runes carved all along the frame. But right where the door was supposed to be, there was a strange, rippling substance that resembled unbroken water. Entranced, Clary moved forward and reached her hand out to the curious surface.

"Don't touch it." Jonathan snapped.

Clary jerked her hand back and glared at her brother. But he didn't seem to notice.

"Something's coming through." He whispered.

And sure enough, a blurry, distorted silhouette was just barely visible, but getting closer and clearer by the second.

"Hide!" Clary said, jumping behind a dusty stack of boxes. She didn't get to see if Jonathan had managed to hide before the figure burst through the portal. Or, as she noted with not a little shock, _figures_.


	10. Chapter 10

There was Valentine, of course, but in addition, there was a slightly taller, slimmer figure that followed him, a boy right around Clary and Jonathan's age.

Clary had to stuff her fist in her mouth to stifle a gasp. She recognized that boy. He was quite literally her sketches come to life.

"So you had a _portal_ here, and you never bothered to, I dunno, tell me about it? Do you know how much fun I could have had with a portal when I was a child? I wouldn't have had to entertain myself with flushing all those awful demonology books down the toilet, for one."

"Jonathan," Valentine interrupted the boy's rambling. "You are still a child. And please, for the love of god, stop talking."

She craned her head around the boxes as much as she dared so she could see better. The boy was dressed in gear, and twirled a seraph blade around carelessly, like it wasn't a deadly weapon that could slice his fingers off if mishandled. His mouth was pulled into a smirk, like he hadn't just been reprimanded by Valentine. Above his mouth stood a straight nose, high cheekbones, blonde, curling hair, and, most noticeable of all, golden eyes that shone like a lion's and roved around the room restlessly.

She jerked back into her original position, but the boy caught the subtle movement and spotted her. For a split second, their eyes met, and a strange thrill rushed through Clary that made her shiver involuntarily.

In the background, she saw her brother's hand flash in the signal that meant _attack_ , and her mind instantly cleared. _Attack_. _Attack Valentine._

She jumped out of her hiding spot and leaped towards her father, planning to tackle him.

She was just a breath away from him when she was thrown out of the air by a strong, mysterious force and hit the stone floor hard.

Pain burst in her head like fireworks, but Clary fought through it and scrambled to her feet. Had Valentine managed to turn around and block her that fast? She looked around for the source of the attack in a daze.

Jonathan had Valentine pinned to the floor and was punching him repeatedly in the face, too rapidly for her father to get a breath in. It couldn't have been Valentine, then. That meant…

The boy—she refused to call him Jonathan—launched himself at her brother from behind Clary and grabbed his arm, trying to pry him off. Clary narrowed her eyes and drew Nyx and Hemera from her gear. It was clear that this stranger was fighting with Valentine, which made him an automatic enemy in her mind.

 _Maybe he just doesn't understand,_ a small voice nagged at Clary, but she pushed it down. Her brother needed her, and that came before everything else.

She bounded to the boy and, without hesitation, stabbed Nyx into his shoulder. Or at least, she tried to. At the last second, the boy managed to twist around and kick Clary so the blade glanced off of the black armor.

Briefly, Clary was at a loss. How had he managed to move that quickly? It was inhuman, almost as fast as…her brother.

She growled and threw herself at the boy again, slashing with all the strength she could muster, which managed to at least distract him from Jonathan as he turned to Clary and returned her fire with equal passion.

He was fast, but Clary was too, and gashes gradually began to appear on his golden complexion as they stayed locked in their deadly dance. Clary supposed that she was getting injured as well, but the battle high drowned out any concept of pain for her.

She faltered only when she saw the boy's broad grin. He was enjoying this fight, for some unfathomable reason. Clary couldn't deny that the adrenaline rush was amazing, but nothing worthy of the delight that radiated from this odd stranger.

Unfortunately, the boy used Clary's brief pause to his benefit, and quickly pinned her to the floor before she could retaliate. She immediately went limp in hopes he would relax as well and give her a window of escape, but his grip only tightened.

"You think I'd fall for that? Oldest trick in the book." He said, still smiling.

Clary didn't reply, her mind racing for a way to escape.

The boy positioned his seraph blade right above her head, going for the kill.

She closed her eyes and turned away, bracing herself for the hit that would end her.

But it didn't come. She cracked an eye open to look back at him. Maybe Jonathan had come to her rescue and attacked the boy? But no, the boy still straddled her, holding the glinting weapon. Something was holding him back; she just had to figure out what.

It was then Clary noticed that his hand that held the weapon was shaking ever so slightly. She smiled to herself. That was all she needed.

"You haven't killed a Shadowhunter before, have you?" Clary taunted. It was true that she'd never even seen another Shadowhunter outside of her family, let alone murdered one, but she saw no reason to share that information. "Bet you've never killed anything except the occasional demon, to practice on. How pathetic."

His left eye twitched, and Clary felt a twinge of guilt, for even she knew that she was being a bit excessive. But Valentine had taught her well how to exploit other's weaknesses, and she would be a fool to not fully use that knowledge in situations like these.

"Why don't you focus on Valentine, golden boy?" she heard Jonathan call from behind them. The boy's eyes widened and he looked over to where her brother stood, holding a grotesque, bloody figure that was now unrecognizable as Valentine.

The boy screamed in rage and threw himself at Jonathan, letting go of Clary. She jumped to her feet to see the two boys locked in a fight, too fast for Clary's eyes to make sense of it.

Eventually, she heard the boy cry out in pain, and saw him collapse to the floor. Jonathan picked him up by the throat and drew his fist back, preparing to deliver an inhumanly strong punch to the boy's head, a blow Clary knew he wouldn't survive.

"Jonathan!" She shouted, against her will. Some deep instinct inside her had pushed the words from her lips. But once they were out, she knew that she was doing the right thing.

Her brother paused, and looked questioningly at his sister.

"Stop. Don't kill the boy." Clary said, hoping she sounded forceful enough.

"He's with Valentine, Clary. And he just tried to kill you."

"But he didn't. And now, I owe him the same favor."

Jonathan's lip curled. "Well, _I_ don't owe him anything." His fist hovered in the air, seconds away from launching towards the boy's skull.

Clary's mind raced. What could she say to make Jonathan stop? What mattered to him more than the death of someone that went against him?

"Please, Jonathan. For me. For your sister."


	11. Chapter 11

The moments that followed felt like an eternity as Jonathan considered. Clary didn't realize she was holding her breath until her brother finally, finally dropped the boy, and she exhaled in relief. She heard an alarming _thunk_ as the boy's head hit the floor hard, but she could deal with that later.

"What do you want from him, Clary?" Jonathan asked, his voice the low purr that always signaled danger.

Clary chose her words carefully, knowing that a weak argument would end in the boy's demise. "Information. He might be able to answer some of the questions we've always had about Valentine."

"Who cares what that old man did? He's dead now, isn't he?"

Clary sighed, desperately trying to hide how intimidated she was by her brother. "Just let me question him. If he doesn't cooperate, you may do what you will."

Jonathan stared at her hard, and she met his gaze with what she hoped was a calm face.

"Fine." He spat, and stalked out of the attic, muttering something about terrible mistakes.

When he was gone, she walked to the boy, who was still out cold. Not knowing what else to do, she kicked him in the ribs, not hard enough to break bones, but not soft, either.

The boy yelped and rose to consciousness, jumping up to stand on his feet. When he saw Clary, a jaunty smile lit up his face, revealing his chipped incisor.

"What?" she snapped, a tad harsher than she'd meant it to sound. But he didn't seem to mind.

"You didn't have to kick me. I was awake the whole time."

Clary grit her teeth. "That was a cowardly thing to do then, to fake passing out."

He raised his hands up, palms out. "I knew I wasn't going to win that fight. Something's wrong with that guy. No one should be that strong. Or psychopathic, for that matter."

 _You have no idea._ "That guy happens to be my brother, so kindly keep your insults to yourself." Clary hesitated before speaking again. "Did you hear our conversation?"

She hoped he hadn't. It would significantly lower her credibility if he'd heard her brother pushing her around.

"Of course I did. And it would appear that my shocking good looks have saved my life once again. No woman saves a man's life out of the blue just for _information_. If you just wanted that, you'd be threatening me with a knife against my throat right now."

She scoffed. "As if I would ever be shallow enough to spare your life because of your looks. I just generally dislike pointless killing."

"Sure, sure. That's what they all say."

She couldn't help joining in. "Who's they? I suppose you've got an arsenal of fair maidens swooning over you at home?"

"Shoot, you've got me."

Out of the corner of her eye, Clary noticed the boy subtly shifting his blade so it was in a more easily accessible position. Her heart sank. The boy was trying to distract her so he would be able to attack and kill before she even knew what was happening.

Clary violently pushed down the disappointment that filled her at this. She shouldn't care if the boy thought she was a coldblooded killer right along with her brother. But somehow, she did.

Instead of calling Jonathan in, she decided that she could handle this herself. She began to shoot back a retort, then, in midsentence lunged at the boy, drawing Nyx as she did.

He wasn't expecting it, and she found herself on top of him with Nyx pressed to his throat so that every beat of his pounding heart made the knife dig in to his flesh just a little bit more.

"Why were you trying to protect Valentine? What is he to you?" She already had an inkling of what his answer might be, but she wanted to make sure.

"Well, usually when two lunatics appear out of nowhere and start trying to murder you and your companion, you tend to try and fight them off, regardless of who the companion may be."

"Answer the question, or I'll turn you over to Jonathan."

The boy sighed dramatically, obviously faking a calm air. "I don't know who this 'Valentine' is, but the man that I was trying to defend is—was—my father." His voice broke slightly on "was", and he buried his face in his hands for a moment before looking back up at Clary. "And now he's dead."

Clary was on the verge of accusing him of lying, for there was no way that Valentine could have been this boy's father. But then, she finally connected all the puzzle pieces in her head and realized exactly what was going on.

"You're the boy, aren't you?" she said. "The one Valentine raised in the Wayland Manor, as his adopted second son."


	12. Chapter 12

"Jonathan Christopher Wayland." Clary said again, rolling the boy's name around on her tongue. "You know, there could still be a chance that you are a Wayland, but I doubt it. I don't think Michael Wayland rolled that way, if you catch my drift."

The boy didn't respond, still curled up with his chin resting on his knees, and staring at the floor with a dead look in his leonine eyes. Clary couldn't really blame him for it. He'd just found out that his "father" had been lying to him his entire life; that he hadn't so much as bothered to tell him his real name. But Clary couldn't quite ignore the mild annoyance that his behavior provoked in her. She would've liked for the boy to work with her and try to puzzle out what his last name might be, but clearly, that wasn't going to happen.

"And as for your first name…well, you told me how you came across that, and it sounds like you stole it from my brother, which leads me to believe Valentine didn't even bother to give you a name."

At this, the boy groaned in palpable agony and buried his head into his legs. Clary felt a unexpected feeling of sorrow for him, and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

"Hey." She said gently, unsure of what to do. She wasn't very good with emotions. "We already knew Valentine was a monster. None of us were anything but experiments to him."

The boy snapped his head up and narrowed his eyes. " _You_ weren't. Valentine would talk of you to me, you know. About the girl with the fire red hair and freckles, how she was the perfect mix of compassionate and cruel, how she had made him so much prouder than I ever would."

Clary sucked in a breath. "He…he said that about me?"

The boy looked away. "He made it sound like you were dead, but yes. You were the invisible, ever-present standard that I could never hope to live up to."

It made sense that Valentine would lie and say she was dead. He wouldn't have wanted the boy to get curious, not like Clary had been about him. But if Valentine had thought so highly of her, then why had he wanted to send her away in his last hours? It didn't make sense.

Clary banished these thoughts. She would find the answers some dark, quiet night in the future, when she didn't have so many other, much more pressing matters to deal with.

"Well, that doesn't matter now, does it? He's dead, after all." Clary said, echoing her brother's earlier reasoning. My point from before was that you and my brother can't have the exact same name. That would be dreadfully confusing."

The boy chuckled dismally. "So you want me to change it?"

"Not completely. Just alter it a little. Something with the initials, maybe. What about…Jonny C?"

She grinned at him, and he stared back.

"Jonny C?" he asked slowly, his voice carrying the slightest edge of mockery. Clary quickly grew defensive.

"What? It's to-the-point, edgy—"

"Jonny C is _not_ edgy. I would be the laughingstock of Shadowhunters for decades. 'And this, children, is the greatest Shadowhunter that ever lived, the record holder for most demons killed ever, _Jonny C_."

"Fine, you come up with your name, if my idea sucks so much." Clary said, miffed now.

The boy's mouth quirked up at one corner, and Clary had to fight the smile that she felt growing in return.

"Well in that case, I was thinking about the name Fabian."

Clary clapped her hand over her mouth, but that didn't stop the waves of silent laughter that racked her. Finally, her laughter bubbled down to the point where she could gasp out a sentence. "From the way you were criticizing my idea, I'd thought you would have something remotely better in mind. Where on earth did _Fabian_ come from?"

"I'll have you know there were some great people named Fabian."

"Oh, really? Like who?"

"Well, there's me, for one."

Clary rolled her eyes. "No, there's not, because I refuse to let you be named Fabian. Your future self will thank me, I promise you."

The boy mock-pouted. "If you insist on crushing my dreams of becoming the greatest Fabian that ever lived, I suppose I must comply. Your turn."

"Ummm…" she tilted her head, deep in thought. What name would match this boy? It had to be short, but still reminiscent of his original name…

"Jace." The word flowed out of her so effortlessly, so naturally it was a wonder she hadn't thought of it before.

"What?" the boy asked, and Clary smiled. It was a perfect fit.

"Jace. As in your initials, J and C.

The boy rubbed his chin. "Well it's better than Jonny C, but that's not saying much."

"Oh shut up." She teased, and punched him lightly in the chest. He laughed, and she knew that, even though he hadn't given his direct confirmation, he'd accepted the name. He was no longer her brother's ghost. He was someone new, someone different. Jace.


	13. Chapter 13

"Neither of us are going to the Institute that Valentine tried to send you off to, and that is final." Jonathan said, his posture as unyielding as stone. " _Especially_ not with that boy."

They stood in the meadow outside, facing each other with their arms crossed. Clary had known that her brother wouldn't like this plan she'd come up with, but they'd spent over half an hour discussing it, neither side willing to give up any ground. She was quickly becoming frustrated with Jonathan's rather bullheaded stubbornness.

"His name is Jace. And don't you get it, Jonathan? We have to. There's nowhere else for us to go." Clary pleaded.

Jonathan laughed derisively, a long, drawn out chuckle that made the hair on the back of Clary's neck stand on end. With his usual queer unnatural grace, he slowly, slowly walked up to her, closing the distance between them until their faces were only inches apart. She tried to shrink back, but he only brought his arms around her waist and sharply jerked her closer. "You're wrong." He said, simply and without a trace of animosity. "You see, we have _everywhere_ to go, you and I. We could go anywhere we wanted, do anything we wanted, and who would stop us?"

"Jonathan—"

" _Who would stop us_?" he repeated, almost yelling. Clary could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest against the palm of her hand, pulsing with the poisoned obsidian blood of demons. She pressed her lips tightly together and drew her eyes shut, refusing to answer.

"No one." he whispered, after several beats of silence. "Together, we are stronger than any other force in this world. Do you realize that?"

"You're stronger." She corrected. "I'm just me." She reopened her eyes, almost afraid of what she might see there.

Jonathan shook his head, a wry smile twisting his lips. "No, Clary. I may be more powerful than you physically, but that's nothing, not really. You burn brighter than a hundred of me ever could, a thousand of me. As for myself…I consider it a privilege merely to bask in your glow."

Clary's lips parted in surprise. She truly hadn't thought her brother would ever be capable of saying such words, not honestly. And he was being honest, being completely sincere. Out of all the events that had taken place that day, this was easily one of the strangest.

However, she barely had time to contemplate such groundbreaking occurrences before his mouth slammed into hers and she realized he was, beyond all belief, kissing her.

At first, Clary was paralyzed with shock, with her back ramrod straight and arms awkwardly at her sides, not daring to move an inch.

 _Your brother is kissing you. Your part-demon brother is_ kissing _you._

She gasped and began to struggle to break free, to just rip her mouth from his, but it was no use. Jonathan was too strong, and besides, he seemed to _like_ her resistance. He grabbed a fistful of her fiery hair and pulled her head back, forcing her mouth open. Their tongues clashed, and Clary whimpered, needing to get out. This was so wrong, on so many levels. Jonathan, unfortunately, took her whimper as encouragement, as some sort of sick form of pleasure, and removed one of his hands from her face to run it languorously down the curve of her hip. Clary, against her will, shuddered at his touch, for it was not an altogether unpleasant feeling—

"What the hell?"


	14. Chapter 14

Jonathan tensed, and then, with tangible reluctance, broke away from Clary. When he saw who had spoken, he shoved himself away from her and stalked towards the offender, a dark growl reverberating in his throat as he went.

Clary watched his motion in an almost hypnotized state, her body refusing to move for reasons she could not hope to fathom. She wasn't shocked, exactly. She'd already known her brother had harbored feelings for her. Nor was she frightened, for she had never been raised to tolerate that emotion. No, Clary was experiencing something else entirely: anger, deep and unbridled.

She dashed past him and threw her pale arms out, stopping him in his tracks. "Stop, Jonathan. Don't touch him."

He slit his eyes and stepped towards her, clearly not fazed. But who would be? She wasn't very menacing in appearance after all, with her flyaway, almost child-like red hair and her short, sticklike frame. She did have muscle, but it wasn't easily visible. It was what Valentine had always shamed her for: Clary would never be an imposing figure, not like her father and brother were.

"Move, Clary. Or I will move you myself." he said, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

Clary breathed deeply and reminded herself that this wasn't her brother, it couldn't be. This…thing that spoke to her, threatened her, kissed her, was the embodiment of the demon blood that ran in him, forcing poisoned words from his mouth and twisted emotions through his mind.

"No. Jace has done nothing wrong. You have no right to punish him for doing what any rational person would."

"What's going on?" she heard Jace ask from behind her, bewilderment heavy in his tone..

"Shut up, Jace. Please." Clary said under her breath. Was he _trying_ to get himself killed? It certainly seemed like it.

Clary braced herself as Jonathan began to speak, knowing that this tedious situation could quickly grow dangerous once again.

"You see, _Jace_ , my sister is once again attempting to protect you, though I've not a clue why." A flicker of jealousy crossed Jonathan's face for an instant, but before Clary could understand why it was there, the emotion disappeared entirely. She must have imagined its presence in the first place.

"Why do you care?" Clary asked.

"I could ask the same of you, little sister. _Why do you care?_ "

She looked away, but he grasped her chin in his iron grip and forced her to meet his eyes.

"Look at me. Why do you care about some stranger? You should only care about me." If it was possible, the last sentence was ever so slightly petulant.

Gently, Clary removed his hand from her chin and cupped his face in her hands. Immediately, he relaxed at her touch, his predatory stance melting away.

"I love you, Jonathan. You are the only person I love. I would give my life a thousand times over for you. Nothing will ever change that. Not even this." She lightly touched the unnaturally dark blood that still marked his forehead, left over from a now-healed wound.

"But," she continued, "I will not abandon Valentine's adopted son in a valley you can never escape from. He is our brother. We should treat him as such."

Jonathan snarled, his face contorting uglily. "That boy is not, and will never be, our brother. He doesn't have a drop of Morgenstern blood in him."

Clary glared at Jonathan. "Blood isn't the only thing that matters, brother. By that logic, shouldn't you have loved Valentine? Loved him as a father, regardless of how he treated you?"

Without giving him a chance to respond, she turned her back to him and walked towards Jace. He had one of his blades out and was toying with it, flipping it between his slender hands, much like he had been when she had first seen him.

"Well, this is awkward." Jace said. "I was just thinking this place was a pretty good area to kick back for now. Nice blue sky, green grass. A couple psychotic murderers. It's paradise, really."

Clary rolled her eyes. "Shut up. If you know what's good for you, you're coming with me."

"Actually, if anything, you're coming with me. I'm the only one that Valentine showed the Institute to, so I'm your only way to get there via Portal." Jace grinned when he saw Clary's incensed expression

"I sincerely hope that not everyone in the Shadowhunter world is like you, Jace Wayland," Clary began, walking away from them to the cottage, "because if they are, I really don't think I want to go through that Portal after all."

Clary would never get used to the look of Portals, she knew, no matter how many times she saw one. The surface shimmered and refracted erratically, unlike any natural substance on Earth.

She could almost make out a building on the other end, which she assumed to be the Institute, but it was like peering through fast-flowing water: the image distorted on itself much too rapidly for her eyes to track it. Clary glanced to Jace, who was by her side; wanting to see if he looked as nervous as she felt.

Of course, he kept a flawless poker face, but what had she expected? She should have assumed that Valentine would have taught him the same values as he'd taught her and Jonathan: that showing emotion was a weakness, and of the worst variety at that.

"Are you ready?" he asked her.

"More than you are." she replied, looking pointedly at the rapid pulse at the base of his throat.

He didn't laugh it off as she expected he would; instead, he scowled, and busied himself adjusting his blades that were hooked on to his black leather belt.

Clary sighed. "You don't like me." It wasn't a question, just a confirmation of a fact that she had already suspected to be true. He looked back up at her, clearly exasperated.

"How could I not, Clary? You do recall that tiny incident where you killed my father, right? That can rub a person the wrong way, even a peaceful soul like myself."

"Peaceful, my ass." Clary muttered. "Usually, people that carry as many blades as you do are filled with violent rage, not peace.

"And don't act like you've only got the four or five weapons that happen to be in plain sight." she added, seeing the look he gave her. "I've counted three in your boots alone, not including the one that you probably have hidden in your sole."

Jace stared. "You're good, I'll give you that much."

Clary smiled, just slightly. "Who wouldn't be, growing up with Valentine?"

He flinched at the mention of the deceased man's name. Clary cocked her head, trying to fit all of the jagged puzzle pieces together in her mind.

"Valentine didn't treat you as harshly, did he?" she said.

Jace's brow furrowed. "Why do you say that?"

"Because you loved him." Clary said plaintively. She didn't regret killing Valentine at all, couldn't even imagine someone mourning him. But unlike her, Valentine had been all that Jace would have had growing up, all that he would've been given the opportunity to love, whereas she'd had at least her brother to lean on.

She hadn't thought it possible that a monster such as Valentine could be mourned, but his adopted son was definitely grieving for the father figure he lost. But Clary didn't feel like pointing out to Jace just how cruel Valentine had been in life, how pointless it was to love a monster, for she was doing the same thing: giving her heart away to someone who didn't know how to give theirs in return.


	15. Chapter 15

"Where were you?" Clary demanded of her brother, who had just appeared in the entrance to the attic. His breathing was faintly labored, she noticed, and his hands were braced against the small doorframe as if that was all that was keeping him on his feet.

"Dealing." he said, and that was all. Clary decided not to question him.

"Well, I hope you're done now, because we're leaving. Jace has already gone through the Portal."

Jonathan raked his fingers through his hair agitatedly. "That's the thing. I…I'm not going."

She spun around, refusing to believe what she'd just heard. "What are you talking about?"

"I just told you. I am not going to the Institute. Not now, not ever."

Her brain couldn't process what he was saying, wouldn't process it. "Wh-why not?"

Jonathan involuntarily stepped closer to her, then realized what he was doing and jerked back to lean heavily on the wall. "Clary, I love you." He began, as if he'd practiced saying it to himself several times. Maybe he had. "Or maybe I am in love with you, I can't tell the difference anymore. I would follow you anywhere, do anything to just be at your side. But I cannot, will not go to an Institute, where everything you eat, speak, and breathe is under the Angel. It would kill me inside."

Under his breath, he muttered something so quiet that Clary had to strain her ears to hear. "Of course, being away from you might very well kill me too, but I'll take my chances."

Clary's bottom lip trembled. She was going to cry, for the first time in as long as she could remember. "But...I thought that this was what you wanted. That's why I came up with this plan in the first place, so we could escape together and live our lives free of Valentine."

"No, you don't understand. That is what I've dreamed about since I first began loving you, that we would kill Valentine together and finally be able to do whatever the hell we wanted, with no consequences for once in our lives. But it wasn't supposed to be like this…never like this. You weren't supposed to go skipping off with golden boy to some Institute, leaving me to follow along helplessly into my own personal hell."

Clary exhaled. She hadn't thought of that before, hadn't factored in Jonathan's demonic half and how it would react to a place that was completely under the Angel. How selfish she was being!

"I'm sorry, Jonathan." She managed to choke out, ashamed at herself.

He opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off as the entire cottage began to shake, like they were in the middle of a vicious earthquake. But earthquakes never shook the valley they lived in.

She was thrown down to the floor hard, and winced as she landed awkwardly on her ankle. Clary staggered to her feet and limped towards the small window, peering out of the filmy material to see what was going on below.

"Jonathan," she said, forcing her voice to remain at a vaguely calm pitch, "you need to see this."

In less than a second, he'd crossed the room and was standing beside her. Immediately, he saw what she was talking about, though it would have been hard to miss the hordes of demons that now swarmed their valley home, so densely packed in that they obscured the green meadow grass.

"They're trying to get in the house." Jonathan said, simultaneous with the loud crack that resounded through the structure. "Sounds like some of them already have."

"Come on!" Clary said urgently, pulling his hand towards the Portal. "I don't think it's going to stay open much longer."

Jonathan dug his heels in, and Clary may as well have been trying to move a stone wall for all the progress she made towards the five-dimensional door. After a few moments of fruitless struggle, she gave up and looked back at her brother. He met her glare with equal, if not greater ferocity. "I will not go to the Insitute."

Clary threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "Oh for _God's sake_ , Jonathan. I understand how being at the Institute isn't ideal for you, but demons are attacking our house as we speak, and you refuse our only chance of escape just because of some _hunch_ —"

She was interrupted by the startling hiss that came from the entrance of the attic, a unique sound that Clary had only ever known one type of demon to make. She forced her heartrate down, down, down, a trick that Valentine had taught her to protect herself from both demons and, though she hated to admit it to herself, her brother. Demons could sense fear; it riled them, made them quicker and more vicious. She turned towards the doorway, an, as she expected to, beheld the awful sight of a Ravener demon, the repulsive assassins of the Shadow World. It hissed again, and began to scuttle towards her on its insectoid, clawed feet.

It was dead before it reached her, its black blood mixing with the thick layer of dust on the floor before she could even draw her daggers to kill it herself. She didn't have to glance to her side to know that Jonathan was responsible for the throwing knife now embedded in the thing's carapace, right at the center point where its heart rested. An instant, perfect kill. As Clary watched, the corpse folded in on itself as demons did, smaller and smaller until it was nothing but ashes, leaving behind only the weapon that had been its demise.

Jonathan walked up to where the Ravener had been and picked up the blade, sneering as he saw the ruin the demon's blood had wrought upon the metal.

"That's inconvenient." He said, tossing the half-disintegrated weapon to the side. "Remind me to use something of adamas next time."

"There won't be a next time, at least not here. We are leaving, Jonathan. Both of us." Clary said, walking to the Portal.

"We can't. Demons can go through Portals, too. We'll have to fend them off here until the Portal begins to seal, then go through at the last moment. Unless you want to bring hordes of demons to the Institute's doorstep, which, though it would make quite a show, isn't the best first impression you could make." He sounded too calm about the idea, cheerful even. Clary narrowed her eyes. She knew he had an ulterior motive, purely because he never operated without one, but she had bigger things to worry about. Unfortunately, he was right about demons going through Portals, which meant a clean escape was out of the question.

With no small measure of reluctance, she whipped out her daggers and gripped them in a fighting stance. Jonathan watched her, grinning.

"What?" she said crossly.

"You're holding your blades too tightly. Loosen up."

She was about to protest, then looked down at her hands and realized that it was true: her knuckles were turning white with the force of her grip, a mistake that could very well be fatal in combat. She scowled and relaxed, shifting into her lither fighter's stance.

They waited for what felt like eons to Clary, but no demons came.

"Maybe they're lost." Clary said, flipping her blades idly. "And if that is the case, I think it would be in our best interest to help them find their way home."

She sheathed her weapons and walked out of the attic towards the staircase, half-expecting Jonathan to reprimand her, to tell her to come back and be patient. But no, that wouldn't have been in his nature at all, for if there was one thing the siblings had in common, it was their intense hatred of waiting for anything. And so instead, Jonathan only nodded in agreement and followed her.


	16. Chapter 16

"By the fucking Angel." Jonathan whispered. Clary agreed with him silently. As it had turned out, the demons as a mass were a lot smarter than the pair had given them credit for, for what awaited them in the main level of their small cottage could only be described as a planned ambush. The living area, a room that contained some of Clary's fondest memories as a child, was now completely overrun with demons of all different shapes and sizes, each one more gruesome than the last.

One trigger and it would be hell, Clary knew. As soon as one of the demons became aware of their uneasy presence halfway down the staircase, they would all attack in overwhelming numbers, a force that she wasn't sure even Jonathan and her working together could take. She tugged on his sleeve, and when he looked over, she cocked her head back to the top of the staircase, signaling that she thought they should go back to the Portal and wait until it was about to close. He ran his tongue along his teeth, thinking. _It's not worth it_ , she mouthed, afraid to make an audible sound. Clary understood his instinctual, Shadowhunter-borne desire to kill any demon thrown in front of him, but she didn't want to risk their lives over a battle that they had the chance to avoid. Subtly, he nodded, a brisk jerk of his head, and they began to cautiously walk backwards up the stairs, testing each stair for a creak before they rested their full weight on it.

Clary didn't know how it happened. Maybe she'd accidentally brought her foot up too high, or maybe she had simply slipped. Regardless, she somehow lost her balance, and began to fall down the stairs, her arms pinwheeling helplessly at her sides. To her credit, she didn't cry out, though it would have made little difference in the grand scheme of things, as the racket her downwards tumble caused would have woken the dead, let alone reached the ears of every demon in the house.

Clary landed awkwardly on her side and stayed there, not daring to move a muscle. She could see from her position on the floor a gray, slimy tentacle that was coiled around itself and dotted with suckers like a squid. That is, if squids had suckers that were blood red and tipped with miniscule spikes that Clary knew were dripping with poison lethal enough to kill any self-respecting Shadowhunter in a matter of minutes. She closed her eyes in defeat. It was a Raum demon, no doubt. She was as good as dead. But that didn't mean she wouldn't go out with a bang. Concealed within her black gear, Clary's hand curled around one of her daggers, and she smiled.

The Raum demon never even saw it coming. It stared at her as it began to collapse, its black, soulless eyes filled with hate even in its last moments. She ripped Hemera out of its heart, examining the ichor that covered the adamas blade. The weapon would survive. If only she could be so sure about herself.

The demons all came in a rush, like a huge wave that Clary was helpless to prevent. So instead, she rode the tide, her body moving in almost rehearsed grace as she spun throughout the demons, Hemera and Nyx moving effortlessly in unison with her. In moments like these, Clary understood what she was meant to do in life, what she had been brought upon this world to do. Drawing was fine and well, but couldn't hold a candle to the complex, beautiful art of combat.

So caught up in the battle was she that she failed to notice how many demons were falling all around her, or how much of a disruption she was causing among the army. All she knew was that she had to keep fighting whatever was put in front of her until there was nothing left. The battle high had completely overtaken her, and there was no turning back from that.

Hazily, she realized that the demons had stopped fighting her back, that when she struck them, they just coiled back and looked into space with blind fear. At first, she'd thought that they were submitting to her, too dazzled by the destruction she'd already wrought upon their kind to even try fighting back. Then she realized what a foolish idea that was. Demons couldn't think that way, didn't have the brain capacity to surrender…unless some greater force was making them. _Shit._

Reluctantly, Clary stopped her bloody dance and turned around. Like she'd expected, none of the demons behind her chose to attack when she was vulnerable. She almost wished that they would have, looking at the horrific sight in front of her.

Clary had never seen anything like it before, which was saying something, since Valentine had made her read every Demonology book in his possession, forcing her to recognize any demon and their strengths and weaknesses within a second of them being shown to her.

It was a nauseating thing, to say the least. Its front half was vaguely equine, though far bigger than any horse Clary had ever seen. A sleek, ebony coat of fur did little to veil the huge muscles that bulged unnaturally from its torso and legs, at the end of which mammoth hooves emerged, blood red and…swirling. No, that couldn't be right. Clary blinked hard several times, struggling to clear the hallucination, but it didn't go away. What was wrong with her?

Gradually, the black coat gave way to silvery green scales that Clary was willing to bet were each razor sharp, forming a serpentine tail that sprawled across the wood floor, writhing in an unnatural way that made Clary feel nauseous. She'd never liked snakes, and this wasn't doing too much for that phobia. But she forced her eyes to backtrack up to the thing's head, which was attached to the horse-like portion by a blunt, fleshy neck that pulsed sickeningly, keeping time with its heart, its life-force. Clary took note of that as its weak spot. A cut, not even a deep one, delivered to its throat could easily cause the creature to bleed to death, if nothing else. That is, if the more lethal parts of the beast didn't kill her first.

Clary never got to see what its face looked like—though she was sure it was just as hideous as the thing's body was—for just as she moved up to its flaring nostrils, she heard Jonathan's voice, uttering a sharp warning.

"Don't look in its eyes, Clary. They'll turn you to stone."

Clary's gaze froze where it was, and slowly, hesitantly moved away from the thing's face.

It laughed—well, Clary guessed it was a laugh. She really didn't know what to make of the sharp, grating sound that sounded eerily like nails scraping against a chalkboard.

" _Clever child._ " The being said, in a voice that was barely discernable as English due to the amount of poison-green saliva clogging its throat. She could see the gooey stuff drip from the thing's serpentine jowls and splatter on the floor, making the wood sizzle where it made contact. In the back of her mind, she was impressed that it could speak a human language; most demons couldn't. It must be one of the more intelligent ones, which wasn't good for them. Those usually proved to be more of a challenge to take down.

" _But who wouldn't be, with the blood of demons coursing through their veins?_ "

Clary opened her mouth to object, for the majority of the demons she'd encountered had proven to be quite dumb, but Jonathan quickly shot her down with a warning look.

" _Although,_ " the monstrosity continued, " _you will not turn into stone, for that is but a silly myth created by mundanes to try and explain the workings of demonic magic. In actuality, your soul will be sent to a…special…part of Hell, whereas your outer shell will remain in this dimension, paralyzed eternally._ "

"What a pleasant image." Clary said, resisting the impulse to run away as far and as fast as she could. "Nothing like a nice lecture about the eternally damned to really get you going in the morning."

The demon snarled, stamping its hooves so forcefully that they cracked the floorboards and made Clary's head pulse with pain. Why was the room bending?

"Clary, your arm." she heard Jonathan say vaguely, for it was like he was speaking through water. Hazily, she brought her right arm to her line of sight, but it took her a while to actually see what was there past all of the blood, and even longer to realize the implications of the wound. Starting at the base of her palm and going all the way up to the crook of her elbow was a huge slash, probably made by some sort of long, sharp talon. Even if the cut hadn't been infected with demon poison, though Clary strongly suspected it had, judging by the black ichor that sizzled and spat against her own scarlet blood, there was no way she could escape a wound this deep, and in an area where so many major veins ran. Plus, she didn't have immediate access to a stele, and wouldn't for a while. In the very best case scenario, Clary would lose her right arm. In the worst case, she'd be dead within the hour.

All of this ran through Clary's mind in a just a few seconds. Jonathan was standing beside her, his slender, pale hands covered in her blood. He was murmuring reassuring lies to her, silly things such as 'it's going to be all right', when she knew that, short of some miracle, things were most certainly _not_ going to be all right.

" _You should not have been here._ " The thing hissed, but Clary was barely paying attention now, her brain much too affected to process the words even if she had wanted to.

" _Jonathan belongs to my mistress, and no one else._ "

Clary couldn't hear what the creature was saying, but she could definitely see as two blood-red pincers quite literally _ripped_ out of its ebony flank, snapping with more than enough force to sever Clary's arm off. Or was she hallucinating? Black ichor ran freely down the spots where the crab-like claws had burst from, but the creature didn't seem to notice or care. Clary's blades began to slip from her fingers, the sweat making the hilts slick in her hands.

" _Prepare to die, Shadowhunter scum._ " It said, and Clary knew, with a blinding certainty, that her last hours had come.

It lunged for her, pincers extended. Clary would've liked to have said she'd fought through the pain and dizziness, and attacked the beast with more vigor and skill than she'd ever had before. But instead, as she saw her own death approaching, Clary's knees buckled and she slammed into black unconsciousness before the monster even touched her, collapsed and dying in a pool of her own blood.


	17. Chapter 17

Isabelle opened the doors to the Institute and quirked a brow upwards, leaning against the door in a casual protective stance. The New York Institute was supposed to welcome all Shadowhunters in need, but she was still hesitant to let complete strangers in to her home, no matter how pitiful they appeared to be. Especially when they showed up in the middle of the night and looked like they'd just been put through a shredder.

"Can I help you?" she asked, mentally calculating how long it would take her to reach for her whip stashed in her stiletto boot, if the situation called. You could never be too careful, as she'd learned many times over in the past.

"She-she's dying." The boy said, and Isabelle realized with a start that the dark mass that the boy was holding was in fact a person, a girl no less. "Please…can you help her?"

The way the boy said it made Isabelle think that he wasn't used to saying please, that he just took what he wanted and damn the consequences.

"No." she said. "Go somewhere else. We've already taken in one too many people tonight."

The boy clenched his teeth. "Liar. Let me in or I will let myself in, which won't end well for you."

Isabelle remained unfazed. She knew very well that she was one of the best Shadowhunters she'd ever come across, and this boy, although older and most likely stronger than her, was already injured in several locations. He was definitely bluffing. But who wouldn't, Isabelle reasoned, when the life of someone dear to them was on the line? "What's your name?"

"Sebastian Verlac." he said smoothly, naturally. Isabelle studied him for several moments, then finally moved aside to allow him entrance to the Institute, praying that she wasn't making a huge mistake.

* * *

Clary awoke on a cotton mattress that was so thin she could feel the nails in the hard wooden board underneath it bearing into her back. Everything hurt, to the point where it became all a giant pulse of pain inside her, echoing persistently within. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut. A small moan escaped her, all that she could manage to signal that she was awake.

"Clary?" She heard Jonathan say. She knew it was Jonathan, for no other voice on Earth would ever sound so familiar to her, so much like home. "Are you awake?"

"You know, people moan in their sleep, too." Clary heard a distinctly female, alien voice say. "Hodge said she wouldn't wake up until tomorrow at least."

"J- _Jonathan_." she willed herself to speak, but the word came out sounding more like a groan than anything else. Fortunately, her brother understood.

"Clary." he breathed, savoring her name. Then his voice became slightly distant, and Clary knew he was now addressing the girl. "Is there anything you can do to help her, now that she _is awake_?"

"Who's Jonathan?" the girl asked, suspicion heavy in her voice.

"I'm fairly sure that's Clary's business, not yours or mine." Jonathan returned. What was he talking about? Why was he trying to hide his own name?

The girl let out a sigh that was a little too drawn out to be empty of meaning, and Clary heard a clicking that she assumed was the girl's shoes as she exited the room. "I'll go see what Hodge can do."

As soon as the sound of her footsteps faded, Jonathan leaned in to Clary so his mouth was mere centimeters away from her ear. Clary shivered involuntarily at the unexpected closeness, her eyes still shut.

"My name is Sebastian Verlac now, not Jonathan." He hissed, speaking almost too quick for Clary to process the words. "You are my cousin. Jace is already here, and he is your brother now, under the Wayland name. I promise I'll explain everything later."

Clary didn't have time to respond before the other girl reentered the room and she felt Jonathan move swiftly away from her.

Clary's eyes shot open, and finally she saw what was surrounding her. She appeared to be in some sort of infirmary, laying down on just one of many cots that lined the room, creating the overall image of a fairly barren and depressing room that, under usual circumstances, Clary would take great pains to distance herself from.

Beside her was Jonathan, but he wasn't looking at her. All of his attention was directed to the girl at the foot of the bed, the girl that Clary assumed she'd heard talking to him before. She was stunning, with long, raven black hair that fell in waves down past her shoulders, as well as flawless pale skin that made her thick black lashes stand out, framing her massive dark eyes that shone with mystery, enticing all who dared to meet her gaze. Clary bit her lip, hard, and shoved down the negative emotions this girl caused rise in her. Of course Jonathan was looking at her. Why wouldn't he? It was simply just that Clary wasn't used to not being the center of Jonathan's attention, always.

"Huh. I guess she is awake, after all. I'm not going to lie, I thought I was just indulging you." the girl said, setting down the tray she was holding on a nightstand on the other side of Clary's cot. "Can you sit up?" she asked her. "I won't blame you if you can't. You were looking pretty bad when Sebastian brought you here."

"Uh…" Clary said. With no small amount of effort, she moved one of her hands beneath her to prop herself up. But try as she might, her other hand remained limp at her side, refusing to move.

"Clary, you don't have to if it's too difficult." Jonathan said, but Clary shook her head, and started to push herself up with the one arm she had. With some amount of support from someone she assumed to be Jonathan, she was finally upright, albeit nauseous and in a great deal of pain.

"You have a nasty cut on your arm." The girl started, in a way someone might try to gently tell a person that their loved one was dead. Memories came rushing back to Clary, unwanted memories about what had happened that caused her to be sitting here right now, things that she immediately pushed back out, locking them away safely in a dark, dark corner of her mind. Reluctantly, she looked at her right arm, not really wanting to see the damage that had been wrought there.

"We drew _iratzes_ , tried mundane healing methods, even called a warlock in." The girl continued. "Nothing worked."

Clary closed her eyes, trying to be calm, for she already knew where the girl was heading. Of course, Clary herself already predicted that this would happen, so it shouldn't be a shock. But maybe Clary had just assumed she would die instead, so she wouldn't ever have to seriously contemplate having only one usable arm.

"To put it bluntly, your arm is too damaged in too many areas for you to ever be able to use it again. I'm sorry." The girl said, sounding actually sincere. Clary would've rather she had been cruel about it. At least then, Clary would have had something to pour her frustration into. Without her right arm…she was trained to be ambidextrous, so logically it wouldn't matter that much, but a little voice inside her nagged that now, she would only ever be half the warrior she once was. But Clary would not cry, especially not in front of a stranger. Jonathan was silent, emotionless, which, if Clary had not known better, would have caused her to feel rather indignant. As it was, she suspected that her brother was hiding a great deal behind that cool, disconnected front.

"What's going on in here?" Clary heard a man's voice from outside the infirmary door. Seconds later, a middle aged man entered, with slightly grayed hair and a large, beak-like nose, followed by a boy a little older than her, with black, disheveled hair and icy blue eyes. "Isabelle, I do hope you're not coming on too strong to that poor girl. She looks like she's seen a ghost." The man said.

"I just broke the news to her, about…about her arm." Isabelle said.

" _Izzy_." The boy besides the man reprimanded.

" _Alec_." Isabelle shot back, in the same tone. Clary realized that they must be siblings, and, despite her pain, she grinned at this. They looked much alike now that she'd seen it, with the same hair—though Isabelle's was carefully styled, whilst Alec's looked like he'd just woken up—and something about the shape of the eyes and the jaw as well. Not like Clary and Jonathan, who shared almost none of the same physical traits, except for their eyes, which didn't really count at all, since it wasn't easily visible. Clary alone knew that if Jonathan had not been poisoned with demon blood as an infant, he would share the same shade of eye color as she did, because sometimes, when the light hit him just right, Clary could make out tiny, tiny flecks of green in Jonathan's ordinarily black eyes. But that was all in the way of familial resemblance that the two shared.

"Stop it, you two." The older man said jovially, now turning to Clary. "What an introduction you've had, dear. I apologize, both for myself and on the behalf of them." He jerked his head to the side to gesture at the siblings. "Anyhow, let me start anew, if you would allow me. I am Hodge Starkweather, instructor of the Lightwood children, the future of the New York Institute. And these are my pupils, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood."

"That's quite a title for such a haggard old man." Clary heard Alec mumble. "Excessive pride doesn't suit many well."

Clary smiled despite herself, and Alec caught her grin. Isabelle elbowed Alec. Hodge rolled his eyes. "So as you can see, it is quite a challenge. But here I am, talking away. Tell me about yourself. Your cousin Sebastian had already told us some."

Clary glanced over to Jonathan. He nodded his head subtly, a silent affirmation that she wasn't in too much danger of breaking their delicate cover. So she started to talk, but didn't get very far.

"I—" she began, but immediately was cut off by an inescapable round of coughing, the deep kind that racked your lungs and made you wonder if you could actually asphyxiate from enough hacking.

"You didn't even give her the tisane, Isabelle." Alec said reproachfully, amidst Clary's violent coughing. Hodge picked up the mug and handed it to Clary, who managed to stop her bout long enough to take a good swig. It was delicious, simultaneously creamy and refreshing, and leaving her with a nice aftertaste of mint. But best of all, her coughing seemed to magically cease. Eagerly, she sipped more, but then realized everyone was watching her, waiting for her story, and so she began to tell her and Jonathan's tale.

She was mostly truthful, except for the parts dealing with Valentine. Those, she made up on a whim, hoping her white lies wouldn't come back to haunt her. For some reason, Jonathan didn't want anyone to know that their father was Valentine Morgenstern, judging by the way he'd created fake last names for himself and Clary. She didn't know why, but she respected his decision, and when asked what her last name was, Clary hesitated for only a moment before saying 'Wayland'.

"Ah, so you are indeed Jace Wayland's brother." Hodge said, rubbing his chin. "That is strange. I'd thought that Michael had only had a son. I never heard anything about a daughter."

To this Clary smiled, and replied "Well, I wasn't raised in Idris, or even in an Institute, after all. It's really no surprise you've heard little about me."

At this point, Hodge let the matter drop, a fact she was grateful for.

"Do you happen to know where my brother is? I would rather like to see him." Clary said. She'd almost forgotten about Jace with all of the excitement of late.

Jonathan looked her, a question mixed with anger in his eyes, but Clary just mouthed the word 'act'. He pressed his mouth together and then looked away.

"I do believe he is in the training room. He was particularly fascinated with that area when he first arrived." Hodge said. "I will send Alec to fetch him."

"No, I want to go to him." Clary said, making a move to get out of bed. She didn't want to spend another minute in this dreadful sickroom.

"I'm afraid that can't happen." Hodge said, an unnerving steeliness underlying his tone. You can't walk around with a useless arm. And besides, look at what you're dressed in."

Clary looked down. She was in a plain cotton shift. Her gear must have been too ruined by demons to be saved. "I can get a change of clothes." She said. "And as for my arm…that can be amputated." She said the last word with some difficulty. As tough as she was, the idea of getting an entire limb chopped off was a frightening prospect. But it was better than dragging along an arm that did nothing.

"NO!" Jonathan said, so loud and sudden that everyone in the room except for Hodge jumped.

"Whyever not?" Clary asked.

"Just—please. Don't get it amputated. For…for me."

"It's _my_ arm, or did you forget…Sebastian?" They stared at each other, fire blazing in both of their eyes. Tension crackled in the room. Eventually, Clary looked away, getting off of the cot to stretch her neglected muscles in her legs. "I am getting my arm amputated tomorrow, Sebastian. You have a day to convince me otherwise." She walked to face Isabelle. "Now, please show me to some old clothes of yours. I presume you have something in my size?"

Isabelle bit her lip. "I can try to dig something up. Here, come with me."


	18. Chapter 18

"You're a little small, so it'll be hard to find something that fits." Isabelle said, her voice somewhat muffled by the mass of rumpled clothes that overfilled the closet in the corner of her room.

"Really? I hadn't noticed." Clary remarked dryly. That had always been a sore point for her, one that her brother had always happily abused, often saying that you couldn't be considered a 'real' Shadowhunter until you were over 5'5" and other things of the like.

Isabelle emerged with something that Clary guessed was a shirt, but it was designed to show so much skin it looked like rags in Isabelle's hands.

"That's funny, really." Clary said. "Kindly put that abomination back where it came from."

Isabelle rolled her eyes. "You are insufferable. Keep in mind that _I'm_ actually doing _you_ a favor, not the other way around."

"I don't think you'd be doing anybody any favors if you make me wear that shirt. Do you have anything without a six-inch v-neck?"

Isabelle pouted. "If you're going to be such a nun about it, maybe you should ask Alec if you can borrow his clothes. I'm sure he's got plenty of sweatshirts and baggy jeans for you, if you don't drown in them first."

Clary sighed. "Fine. Just give me that atrocious shirt."

"You mean you're going to wear it?" Isabelle asked.

Clary gave her an odd look. "Of course not. I plan to burn it, so none of your future guests will ever have the misfortune of being forced to wear it."

"You're awfully rude." Isabelle complained. Clary smiled wickedly.

"You think _I'm_ rude? You should meet my brother sometime. You two would get along horribly."

A soft half-smile crossed Isabelle's face. "Yeah…"

Clary's heart went cold. "You like him." She accused. Isabelle's face went back to seriousness. "Yeah, he's hot. So what? Is that a crime?"

"Well, not exactly, but…" _But you see, he's part demon, which makes him incapable of feeling emotions in general, especially romantic ones._ Clary knotted her fingers in her red hair. She couldn't tell Isabelle that; it would blow their cover for sure.

"But?" Isabelle asked, still waiting for her response.

"But nothing, I guess. Just…don't say I didn't warn you, that's all."

Isabelle rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I can handle it on my own. Now go run off to Alec, little nun. Enjoy those boring clothes."

Clary scowled and walked out of Isabelle's frivolous room, her mind spinning. Isabelle was far from being Clary's friend, but Clary still didn't want her to get hurt by Jonathan, which was surely the only way that theoretical relationship could end. For now, she could only hope that Jonathan hadn't noticed Isabelle like _that_ , for Clary knew firsthand that her brother's affections only destroyed and hurt everyone they touched.

Clary was grateful that Isabelle was not around on her way from Alec's room to the training area, for Clary felt that Isabelle would be inclined to mock her in this dire situation if she had by chance seen Clary's current predicament.

Clary was quite literally drowning in clothing, just as Isabelle had predicted.

Alec had tried to give Clary his smallest size clothing, but, as he'd pointed out in the kindest way possible, he didn't keep clothes from five years ago, forcing Clary to come to terms with the fact that she, fully grown, was approximately the same size as twelve-year-old Alec.

Her pride forbid her to go back to Isabelle's room and grovel for that awful shirt, and so now she was miserably stuck in a navy blue sweatshirt whose sleeves extended several inches past her fingertips and stopped around midthigh, paired with jeans that she'd had to roll up more times than she could count, to the point where it looked like she had giant doughnuts around her ankles. Clary felt altogether ridiculous, and was sure that she looked no better.

"You look ridiculous." Jace said, flipping a runed throwing blade around in his hand. "Are those Alec's clothes? Why didn't you borrow from Isabelle?"

"Because Isabelle," Clary began, rolling up the sleeves of the sweatshirt in a futile attempt to look as if she should be taken seriously, "tried to make me a prostitute. She has it in for me, I tell you."

Jace was smiling. "What did she do to make you think that? I mean, besides the attempted prostitution."

"She called me a short nun!" Clary said indignantly.

There was a long pause. "Well," Jace said, "you are very short. But Izzy wouldn't call you that for no reason."

Clary pursed her lips. "I may or may not have threatened to burn the shirt she offered me. But trust me, if you'd seen it, you would have burned it too."

Jace turned back to the targets in the distance and resumed throwing. He was good, but not once did he hit the bullseye; his knives always dancing around it, hitting the circle just outside of the red in the center. To be fair, the targets were a ridiculous amount of distance away, so far that Clary wondered if he wasn't being overly ambitious.

After at least a dozen throws, all of them resulting in the same manner, Jace growled in frustration and threw his last remaining knife to the floor. The metal echoed in the vast room as the blade clattered harmlessly to the ground.

"You're not doing it right." Clary said. Jace looked up incredulously.

"Oh, really? Well, I've been taught by the best, so I really don't know how you could possibly help me improve."

He was talking about Valentine. He didn't even want to utter his name in what Clary had believed to be solitude.

"Well, maybe the best taught me better, because I know for a fact that you're doing it wrong." Clary said. "You're being too robotic with your throwing. You should be flexible, almost elastic when you throw, so you don't jerk around so much." Clary picked up the last remaining knife and demonstrated. The knife hit the dead center.

"Now you try." Clary said.

Jace jogged to the targets to retrieve the knives. Clary watched him, starting to smile as a genius idea formed in her head.

She reached into her belt and pulled out a small knife that would work as a throwing blade easily. Still grinning evilly, she gripped the worn leather blade and eyed the golden back of Jace's head. He was completely focused on pulling out the knives, not even bothering to spare a glance back at her. _Fool._ As quick as a striking snake, Clary threw the blade, hearing it whistle through the air before it embedded itself with a solid _thunk_ …right next to Jace's head.

"Dammit." He muttered, without turning around to face her. "I should have seen that coming."

"You really should have." Clary agreed, then ducked as she heard the telltale whistle of a blade coming at her, so fast she couldn't perceive it with her eyes. But she didn't have to. "You're going to have to be more subtle than that." She laughed as she jumped back up, savoring Jace's stunned expression.

"How the hell did you move that fast?" he finally asked.

"What are you talking about? You react just as quickly as I do, and my…our cousin trumps us both."

"But that's different, because…" Jace trailed off, looking lost all of a sudden. Clary immediately became defensive. "Is it because I'm a girl? Because if that's the case—"

Jace threw his head back and laughed. "Do you honestly think I would ever be that bullheaded? We don't live in the nineteenth century anymore, Clary."

Clary frowned. "Then why?"

Jace shook his head. "Just forget I said anything. It was stupid of me, alright?"

But he was still contemplating, Clary could see, the wheels furiously turning in his head. Clary sighed. She wasn't going to get it out of him, and she certainly wasn't going to waste energy trying.

"Whatever you say." Clary said, letting doubt linger heavily in her tone. She grabbed her blade off of the floor and made to leave the training room.

"What are you doing?" Jace asked from behind her.

Clary turned. "I'm going to go explore the Institute. I might as well get accustomed to it, since I don't see myself leaving anytime soon." She was slightly unnerved at how naturally lying came to her now. Clary knew very well that Jonathan would want to leave as soon as possible from here, that the only reason he'd come to the Institute in the first place was as a last-ditch effort to save her. To be perfectly honest, Clary was impressed he'd even done that much.

Jace dropped his blades. "I'll show you around. There's a pretty cool place I can—"

"Thanks, but I think you should keep practicing here." She interrupted. "I'm pretty sure your atrocious throwing skills take priority right now." She turned back to the entrance to the rest of the Insitute, laughing as she heard Jace's mumbled profanity behind her.

As much as she would have liked Jace's amicable company, she needed to speak with Jonathan. Clary had several things that she intended to discuss with him, and several questions that she needed answers to.


	19. Chapter 19

Thumbs hooked into her pants and whistling absentmindedly, Clary strolled down the torch-lit hall, admiring the tapestries and other grand pieces of artwork that lined the walls. It was true that she had no earthly idea where she was going, since Jonathan had failed to inform her where his room was in the Infirmary. But to be honest, Clary really didn't care. She was perfectly content to roam the halls, appreciating the Institute in general, since she knew Jonathan would not let them stay much longer here.

A quiet murmuring stopped her in her tracks. She looked to the source of the sound, and decided it must be coming from behind one of the thick wooden doors that led to the hundreds of rooms within the Insitute. But what was weird was that it was definitely Jonathan's voice. Who would he be talking to? As far as Clary knew, he detested all of the Shadowhunters that took up residence here. Carefully, she placed her hand on the weathered brass knob to the door she heard his voice behind, but made no move to turn it open. Should she really intrude on whatever he was doing in there? Chances were, it was something that he didn't want his little sister to poke her head into.

But Clary needed answers, preferably before Jonathan took his next course of action which, in all likelihood, was soon. With that thought in mind, Clary turned the handle and strode into the room.

If that tiny, tiny squeak had not escaped her throat as a result of trying to hold in a yelp of surprise, she probably could have snuck back out of the room, unnoticed. Her brother would have never noticed her, and she would have never had to suffer the embarrassment of walking in on her brother interlocked in a passionate embrace with none other than Isabelle Lightwood.

As it was, Clary stood frozen in place with her hands clamped over her mouth, as both her brother and Isabelle turned to look at her. Clary's eyes scanned them both, taking in Isabelle's swollen lips, Jonathan's unbuttoned shirt that revealed his pale, muscled chest, his tousled, white-blond hair. Isabelle's rouge lipstick was smeared on his mouth, making it look as if he were bleeding. It crossed Clary's mind that she'd rather he were.

"Clary?" Jonathan asked, in a curiously panicked voice. "Why are you here?"

Clary's eyes grew hard, and she lowered her hands from her mouth. "Oh, forget it. I'm sure it's nowhere near as important as your business here." she said, gesturing to the two with thinly veiled disgust. "I'll just be on my way, and you two can pick up _right_ where you left off."

Why was she so angry? She should be happy that her brother was finally developing feelings for someone other than her, grateful, even. But somehow, she couldn't stop the rage that filled her at the sight of Jonathan in an intimate position with someone else. Well, it wasn't quite rage. It was really a sick mixture of self-deprecation and anger that reminded Clary all too much of jealousy. But that made no sense. Jonathan was her brother. She shouldn't feel _jealous_ that he was kissing someone else.

Confused and frustrated with herself, Clary turned and dashed out of the room before Jonathan could see the tears rushing down her face.


	20. Chapter 20

**Sorry it's been so long guys! I decided to take a break from writing for a while but I'm going to try to post at least once every other week now...hopefully all goes well :D**

* * *

Jonathan didn't follow her. Clary told herself that she didn't care, but the one person in the world that she could not lie to was herself. Since words didn't work, Clary increased her speed to start running as fast as she could, faster than most humans on earth. She needed to go somewhere safe, somewhere she could pick herself back up enough so that when she saw her brother again, she didn't also see Isabelle wrapped around him.

Clary found herself in the training room. Fighting, as it did for most Shadowhunters, soothed Clary's soul, and she yearned for the cool detachment from everything that combat always brought to her. With a faint pang, she remembered Hemera and Nyx, who had served her well for as long as she could remember in battle. They had been gone when she'd woken up, along with all of the rest of her gear. Perhaps she would consult with Hodge about the matter.

She hoisted a sword off of the wall. It was made out of a heavy type of metal and definitely too big for her small frame, even with two working arms, but she didn't exchange it for another one.

Clary braced it against herself and moved towards the wooden humanoid mannequins that lined the right wall of the huge room, with all the natural grace of an Angel's child. She snarled, letting her anger pour out of her and surround her in an impenetrable shield, giving her the strength to wield the massive blade with ease.

She hated Jonathan. He couldn't wait a week in the real world without running off to make out with the nearest whore.

The mannequin was right in front of her now. She raised the sword, her arm trembling with the exertion.

Maybe her brother was always like this, whenever he and Valentine disappeared for days at a time. Maybe she was only one girl out of hundreds.

Clary screamed, letting all of the torment raging inside her flow out, directing it to the sword. She swung it down with everything she had, and it sliced clean through the vaguely humanoid figure. But she was unable to stop the sword's downward plunge, and it hit the ground with an earsplitting _clang._ Despite herself, she flinched, then inwardly cursed herself for her foolishness. Clary picked it back up, preparing to strike again at the mutilated thing.

"What's wrong with your arm?" a male voice sounded behind her, echoing in the vast room.

 _Jonathan?_

Clary spun around, and let out a heavy breath as she saw it wasn't her brother. It was Jace, holding two of the throwing knives he'd been practicing with earlier. _Of course._ Clary mentally smacked herself. In all of the confusion, she'd forgotten that she had left Jace in the training room to practice only minutes before.

Jace eyed Clary's weapon warily. "You gonna put that thing down, or should I take it as a challenge?"

Clary realized then she'd automatically braced the sword against her in fighting position at the sound of a stranger. Though his suggestion of a fight didn't sound too bad, she reluctantly let it fall to her side. "Go away. My arm's fine."

"No, it's not. My whole life is combat, detecting my opponents' weaknesses. I like to think I'd know if someone was attacking with a disabled arm."

"So I'm your opponent, am I? I'll take you on."

Jace scoffed. "With one arm? You'll go down before I can have any fun at all."

He was antagonizing her. It occurred to Clary that he wanted a fight out of her, that the restless, coiling ball of energy inside the boy was screaming for some fun. Well, she won't give it to him. Clary remains quiet, refusing to take the bait.

"Feeling friendly today, I see." Jace mused. "I practiced with the knives the way you showed me to, by the way. As it turns out, you were right."

"I'm rarely wrong." Clary shot back, then realized what she was doing and mentally retreated back into a dark corner of her mind. "I said, go away. I need to be alone right now."

"Since I'm done here, do you want me to show you around the place now? I have a spot in mind that I think you'd like." Jace went on, without even acknowledging that Clary had spoken at all.

Clary's face flamed. He wasn't listening. Clary hated it when people didn't take her seriously.

She drew her sword back into fighting position. "I'm giving you three seconds."

Jace smiled, and moved his hand to clutch the hilt of a blade hinged on his black leather belt.

One.

He drew it. It was a beautiful thing: an intense, flashing silver covered with glowing runes that seemed to dance all over the gleaming metal. His eyes said _Bring it on._

Two.

This was what he wanted. He was goading her, tempting her to attack him. She shouldn't give him the satisfaction. She'd already decided not to.

Three.

Clary lunged. Jace parried, and easily threw her down to the floor, hard. But Clary was up in a flash, and came at him again. She was like a raging bull: easily thwarted, but not easily defeated as she came on to Jace with unrelenting speed and passion, forgetting the uncomfortable weight of her huge sword and the dead weight of her useless arm.

Jace was dodging and blocking every blow she threw his way, but he couldn't seem to find the time to strike out again at her himself. But through it all, his golden eyes shone with pleasure. Clary saw his lips move, realized he was silently mouthing the word _incredible_.

That word gave her pause, and that millisecond that she stood still was her undoing. Jace took full advantage of her distraction and slammed her on the head with the flat side of his blade. It wasn't hard enough to hurt her, but enough to stun her for a moment...and then she was pinned, well enough that, short of a miracle, she wasn't getting out anytime soon.

Jace was only inches above her, his long, curling blond hair tickling Clary's freckled cheeks. He was breathing hard, but she doubted it was only from exertion. His entire face was lit up by a certain ecstasy that Clary had formerly only associated with the high of vices and carnal pleasures. But as far as Clary knew, Jace had no drugs on his person, and she didn't think the Institute dealt in those sorts of things. Perhaps the high of battle was what he got off on.

The thought excited Clary in a dark way.

Jace wasn't getting off of her, but she didn't particularly mind.

" _Never_ ," Jace said, his breath hot and passionate on Clary, "has _anyone_ given me that good of a run."

Yes, she wanted this. To hell with Jonathan. Clary subtly arched her body towards Jace, just enough so that he would get the message. And he did.

Clary's lips curved into a smile as Jace lowered himself onto her, and their mouths met. Jace started out slow, but Clary didn't want slow. Jonathan hadn't taken it slow with her when he stole her first kiss and she shouldn't be thinking about _Jonathan_ when she was kissing Jace.

She pulled him closer, desperate to erase her brother from her mind. He forced open her mouth, and their tongues clashed, intertwining in a passionate dance, eliciting a moan of pleasure from her.

Clary didn't want to pull away. It was more of an automatic reflex when she did. At least, that was what she firmly told herself.

Jace stared at her, his eyes wide and concerned and his hair sticking up in erratic spikes and altogether looking much too adorable. Clary already ached from his sudden absence, but when he moved back onto her, she pushed him away.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Clary was asking herself the same thing. What the hell was wrong with her? Her brain and her heart were warring against each other, and she couldn't reconcile the two.

"Everything and nothing." She muttered. "I'm sorry Jace. I…this won't happen again, I promise."

She rolled out from underneath him and darted to the door. Jace was saying something, but it was all background noise to her. With each step she took away from him, her heart pulsed in pain. By all means, Jace was perfect for her. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't rid herself of the obsidian eyes that seemed to be seared on the back of her lids.


	21. Chapter 21

Clary forced her heart rate down, breathing in and out evenly until she looked like she hadn't been through a year's worth of emotional turmoil in just one day. She was still wearing Alec's baggy clothes, and noticed that one pantleg had become unrolled so it was well past her shoe.

Checking around the hallway to make sure no one was there, she kneeled down on one knee and began to roll it up, a challenge with one working arm.

As was just her luck, she heard voices around the corner when she was halfway done. Before she could move out of the way, the people rounded the corner and Clary froze, unable to do anything to help her situation. Luckily, It was Alec and Hodge, the only two people in the Institute currently that she could look straight in the eye. They were locked in an intense, hushed conversation, but immediately stopped as they saw her standing there, probably looking like an absolute trainwreck after everything that had happened.

She smiled slightly and made to back away, hoping they wouldn't want to talk to her, but no such luck.

"Enjoying our rather sprawling halls, I see." Hodge chuckled. "You look quite lost, Clary, if you don't mind me saying."

Alec only stared at her stonily. _Geez_. What had she done to him?

"Oh, um." Clary said, standing back up. Her mind raced for a quick and easy lie. "I…just remembered that you hadn't given me a room yet."

"I haven't? I could have sworn I had when you got here." Hodge shook his head, exasperated with himself. "Whatever is happening to me?"

Alec looked at his mentor, faintly amused. "Don't worry, Hodge. No one can be expected to have a decent memory when they're as old as you."

Hodge looked at Alec darkly. "One day, old age will make a fool of you too, Alec Lightwood. And when it does, I will make sure to look down on you from the heavens and laugh, long and well."

Clary cleared her throat, interrupting their banter.

"I apologize most sincerely, Miss Wayland." Hodge said. Clary started a little at the mention of the unfamiliar name, then remembered her alias and regained herself. "I'll lead you to a room beside your brother's. I imagine you'd want a room near him, wouldn't you?"

Clary began to disagree, then bit her tongue. She couldn't refuse. To refuse to be near her brother would lead to questions, questions that she couldn't afford to give the answers to. So, against her will, she nodded mutely. Hodge clapped his hands together. "Excellent! Just follow me, then."

* * *

Her room was plain and simple, but that was the way Clary had been trained to like things. She tried her hardest to ignore the fact that Jonathan was only a thin plaster wall away from her, probably doing unholy things with Isabelle, _to_ Isabelle...

 _Stop it_. Sitting on the bed, Clary held her head between her knees and tried to calm herself. She had asked Hodge and Alec to leave her be some ten minutes ago on the flimsy excuse that she had a headache. They had left, reminding Clary that dinner was going to be served in half an hour if she was feeling better by then. Clary had pretended to act like she was going to think about it. There was no way she was going to willingly endure over an hour of awkward silence with Jace, Jonathan, and Isabelle.

She flung herself onto her rock-hard bed, lying on her back to face the bare, dismal ceiling.

Valentine had taught her and Jonathan for as long as she could remember how to view the world from an objective stance, free of any petty human emotion. It was a soldier's perspective, they'd been taught. There was only black and white in the world, nothing else. Gray was for those who couldn't tell their heads from their asses.

From that soldier's perspective, she should want Jace. He was everything she'd imagined a proper Shadowhunter to be: Talented, brave, witty, handsome...good. He and Clary fit together in a way she'd never imagined, a way that suggested if they had lived in a different world, they would be perfect for each other.

If she'd lived in a world away from _him._

Because long story short, Clary and Jace were perfect for each other, perfectly compatible. They clicked in all of the ways that appeared to matter. But one element was missing: a spark, the one that drove people to near insanity trying to put it into material, tangible things, the thing that all the great love stories were written about, the one that Clary, though she'd heard of it countless times, both through Valentine and the occasional book she read not of the art of war, didn't ever think she'd experience.

So where did all of that thought get her? Absolutely fucking nowhere.

Clary groaned, knotting her fingers in her tangled hair. She needed something to take her mind off of things, now, before she lost her mind in this small, plain room.

As if on cue, three knocks sounded on her door. Clary froze, half-considering not answering and waiting until they went away. Silence followed, and she almost let herself relax again before the person behind the wood resumed their knocking, much more insistent this time. Probably Jace, coming to ask what the hell was going on with their relationship—Clary hadn't exactly been sending him clear signals. If that was the case, Clary couldn't imagine him leaving the door to her room anytime soon.

With a sigh, she pulled herself off of the bed and ambled towards the door. "You know," she began, "if the door's already locked, chances are I don't want you—oh."

As if her day wasn't exciting enough, the opening door revealed none other than her brother, greeting her with a disimpassioned stare.

 _Shit._


	22. Chapter 22

"What?" she asked brusquely.

Her brother shoved past her into her room, looking around with a critical eye. "You don't have anyone in here?"

The words formed as a question, but it was phrased as an order. Clary sneered, bristling at his imperative tone. "Not that you know of. I at least have the decency to hide my romantic affairs."

Jonathan rolls his eyes. "Well, _I_ at least have the decency to knock before barging in on my sibling's romantic affairs."

"Your door was unlocked!"

"Forgive me for being too consumed with passion to remember locking it from my nosy sister." Jonathan turns back to her, smirking.

Clary shudders. "That's disgusting. And it's not my fault I wanted some fucking answers! You've left me in the dark since we got here."

Something in his eyes softens then, and he sits on the bed. "That's true. I just haven't found the time."

"Yeah, all that liplocking must have drained your hours. Since when did you stop hating all Shadowhunters besides me, anyways?"

"I haven't. She's good in bed, that's it."

Clary's mouth drops open. She doesn't know whether to be guiltily relieved or throw up. "No...you haven't, have you?"

Jonathan cocks his head. "What? Do you mean..." he looks around and hushes his voice exaggeratedly "had _sex?_ "

Clary begins to nod, then shakes her head hurriedly. "You know what? Let's just get on another topic. I really don't need to talk about his with my _brother_ right now."

But Jonathan won't let it go. "Of course I've had sex, Clary. Let's not be afraid of the adult word." He grins cheekily. "And don't act like you haven't either."

"Of course I haven't! Who do you think I am?"

"Uh, a teenager with raging hormones and plenty of available, exotic people surrounding you on _every trip you went on with Valentine._ "

"Please, just stop talking. Ugh, sometimes the teenage boy side of you is worse than the demonic one." So he's not a virgin. Well, what had she expected? Morals didn't really play a big role in the mind of a demon or a teenage guy.

Jonathan laughs, and Clary bites her lip in order to suppress her laughter as well.

 _He's beautiful when he really laughs. If only he would do it more._

"SO," she begins a little too loudly, trying to drown out her unruly thoughts. "I still need answers."

Jonathan reassembles his features into the stoic soldier persona from before, and Clary knows that that brief flash of humanity has disappeared from him. "What questions do you have?"

"Oh, you know, just _everything_. For starters, how in the hell did you get us out of the cottage? That demon was milliseconds away from killing us both when I collapsed."

Jonathan winces. "I was kind of hoping you'd forget that."

"Suprise, surprise." Clary says. "Tell me."

"I...I can't."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Jonathan, this is the _first damned question._ "

"Language, little sister." He says, his eyes betraying dry amusement.

"Answer my fucking questions, then maybe I'll fucking consider doing what you fucking tell me to do."

"I'm using my pass card on this one. Next."

Clary growls in irritation, but lets it go for now. This could be the last time for a while her brother's mood would be generous enough for her to pry answers from him. She won't waste his temper on one question.

"Why don't you want the Institute to know our last name?" She says the last part in a hushed tone, paranoid of any eavesdroppers.

"You don't know?" Jonathan says incredulously.

Clary is quickly growing tired of her seemingly never-ending ignorance. "There's a lot I don't know, alright?"

"I guess Valentine really kept his darling baby girl in the dark, then." Jonathan scowls, his mood instantly transforming from laughing to stormy in seconds. "Didn't want her to know what a monster her daddy was."

"I realized what he was when you came home that day." Clary says, not daring to speak aloud of his terrible injuries inflicted by their father. It was hard to believe that happened so recently. It felt like a lifetime ago.

A curtain falls over Jonathan's face at the mention of his injuries, and he recoils on the bed. Clary sits beside him, feeling wretched with herself. Why on earth did she bring his whip marks up?

"Have they gotten any better?" she asked quietly.

"Why don't you take a look?"

Before she can argue, he stands up with a jolt and throws his shirt off, exposing his mutilated back. Clary tries to draw in a breath but chokes on the air, because it hasn't gotten better, not at all.

"Well, it's stopped sizzling." Clary says, trying to inject enthusiasm into her voice. Jonathan laughs cruelly and throws his head back, so his silky blonde hair just barely brushes the spot in between his shoulder blades. Clary averts her eyes.

"That must be the most shit-poor attempt at optimism I've ever heard." Jonathan mutters.

Clary stands up with him and goes on her tip-toes to gently brush a finger along the side of his back. Jonathan sucks in an audible breath and goes still as stone, his hard muscles tensing and jutting out unnaturally.

"Does this hurt?" Clary whispers, lightly running her fingers along his pale skin.

"No."

She slowly moves her fingers closer to the grotesque scars. "What about this?"

"Clary." He begins. "What are you doing?"

"I need to know how sensitive it is—how serious."

"Don't your eyes tell you as much?"

"I have no idea how much pain you're hiding, Jonathan. You do it too well."

Jonathan laughs cruelly, the sound like broken glass. "You want to know the truth, Clary? My back—no, my entire being is in constant agony, all throughout the day, like there's something in my back, actively pulsing just under my skin, destroying any scabs, any relief that might form. It hurts more than anything I've ever known, and believe me, I know pain. And there's nothing you or I or anyone can do about it, so just _let it go_. It's not getting better, and it won't for a long time. Alright?"

Clary sighs, and leans her head on his shoulder, carefully avoiding the wounds. "What kind of sadistic maniac would _do_ this?"

"He wasn't a sadist; only a genius who loved his work more than his children. Though, I wouldn't deny the maniac part."

"How do you know he wasn't? A sadist, I mean."

"I'm not sure. I know I'm supposed to think the worst of him—and don't get me wrong, I do—but he never seemed to take joy in hurting me, and most certainly not in hurting you. I think, to him, I was an experiment much more than I ever was his son; more a monster than human. And why would you ever care about the pain you inflict on a demon?"

"Jonathan..." Clary begins, but isn't sure how to continue her comfort and lets the word hang in the air uselessly.

"I wasn't his son, so he was never my father." Her brother says darkly.

"Valentine didn't see you."

Jonathan walks away from her, turning back to face his sister after a couple paces. "I was a pretty prominent figure in his life, or I would like to think so. I'm pretty sure he 'saw' me."

"Don't be a sarcastic ass about this. I mean that he didn't really ever see you. All anyone ever notices when they look at you is your black eyes, your inhumanity—"

"Do keep going." Jonathan drawls. "Trust me, this is doing wonders for my self-esteem."

"Oh, shut up; you know what I'm trying to get at well enough. No one realizes that you're more than a demon. That the real you is somewhere within, still fighting, still struggling to be better than what you've been destined to become."

"It doesn't work like that, Clary. 'The real me' is half-demon, half-Shadowhunter, which is exactly what everyone sees: two races of war and death merged into one destructive body. It's common sense that they all run."

"The real you is the brother I _should_ have."

The blood drains out of Clary's face as the realization of what she said sinks in. Would it have killed her to just let this one thing go? Evidently not. Evidently, some part of her was still, ridiculously, angry about his affair with Isabelle, still determined to be as much of a bitch to Jonathan as she could for it.

Jonathan's lip curls. "Well I'm sorry I've so cruelly deprived you of the brother you deserve."

"No, Jonathan, I didn't mean—"

The door slams in Clary's face, and she blinks back tears as she listens to her brother's angry footsteps fade away.


	23. Chapter 23

So close, and yet so impossibly, unfathomably far.

Jonathan stands across from her, maybe inches away, maybe miles. The field they stand in is dead, the grass gray, the birds all either dead or migrated to greener pastures. Clary realizes that it is the valley they grew up in, only desecrated and hollowed-out. She searches for their cottage, but finds nothing but bleak gray as far as she can see.

"Clary!" her brother calls out, and begins to run to her. But as he moves, thick, dark cracks begin to run up his arm, eerily alive as they wrap around him like black cobras.

Clary tries to force her legs to move, but they won't budge. It's like she's a fly, trapped in amber, able to see what's taking place but unable to so much as twitch a finger.

Jonathan calls her name again, more desperate and tortured this time, and Clary tries to call back, but her traitorous lips refuse to produce a sound. She is paralyzed, trapped in this agonizing moment. Her brother needs her, and she cannot do anything.

The cracks begin to widen, and then completely split open as Jonathan's arm explodes into pitch, void-like substance, the wails of a thousand corrupted souls blending with his cry in a sickening melody. He screams in agony, over and over, ripping his throat ragged, and Clary is screaming too, even though there is no outward sign of it, screaming with every cell in her being to break free of this petrifying force keeping her from running to the only person that she has ever allowed into her heart.

Jonathan's sprint fades, gets slower and slower until completely degrading into a muddled stumble as the black continues to creep up him, twisting around his chest down to his legs and up to his head. He is slowly disappearing, less and less of Jonathan becoming visible against the overwhelming corruption.

"Clary, Clary please..." Jonathan is mumbling, barely aware anymore. And yet Clary can do nothing. She wants to rage, run to her brother and destroy whatever is doing this to him, destroy anything and everything that would dare touch someone who is so pure inside, so deceivingly good.

He is disappearing, parts of him exploding into void one by one, until he is no longer able to move, both his legs and his arms ripped off and the sickness eating away at his core. But all through it, he stares at Clary, stares at her like he knows that she can do something, something to help him.

The raw hope in his eyes slowly changes to disappointment as he realizes she won't do anything, unaware that she _can't_.

"JONATHAN!"

The bonds are broken.

She runs to him.

It's too late.

His eyes have lost their spark, and stare vacantly into oblivion.

His beautiful, vibrant green eyes.

* * *

Clary jolts out of bed, sweating bullets.

The first thing she sees is Jonathan, attempting to rouse her.

Before he can say anything, she launches herself into him arms, crying tears of relief.

But she can't shake the feeling that the dream wasn't, at least partially, real.


	24. Chapter 24

"You're not dead."

She cradles his face in her hands. The same face that was inanimate mere seconds ago, drained of all life. What strikes her immediately, taking him in, is his eye color. They're not green. They never were, never will be. The demon blood displays its victory over humanity in that unnatural obsidian shade.

Why did she dream them otherwise?

Just a vain wish for an impossible future, that's all. Stupid and frivolous.

Jonathan's fair brows crease together. "Of course I'm not dead." He crooks a bitter smile. "I'm invincible, remember?"

Clary squeezes her eyes shut as an unwanted, repressed flashback comes back to her, summoned by the words: Jonathan rebelling against Valentine, their father beating him as punishment, Clary screaming that he would kill him-for he was only eight at the time; she seven-and Valentine, in order to teach her a lesson, stabbing her brother with a hidden blade right through the heart.

In numb shock, she'd run to her brother's side, knelt, scrambled for the stele she didn't have.

 _Foolish girl. He is a demon, a monster of the most abominable kind. We are cursed with his existence lest a blade of heavenly fire were to pierce his soul._

He had survived. He would not die, as Valentine had so callously taught her.

Clary meets her brother's eyes. Smiles at him, though the memory has carved out all emotion save anger. "Of course. It was but a nightmare."

Jonathan rises. "You never have nightmares."

Clary hears the following words, unspoken as they are: _Not like I do._

 _S_ he shrugs. "It's a new place. I don't suppose you slept well, either."

"As it's two fifteen in the morning as of now, it shouldn't come as a surprise I haven't slept much at all."

She checks the grandfather clock occupying the corner of her room, just to be sure. "Two fifteen? What on earth are you doing here?"

He grabs her good wrist; pulls her upwards. "Finding a way to fix you. Come on."


	25. Chapter 25

"Jon, what's going on-what are you doing-Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern _answer me_ -"

"Shut up," he whispers, and begrudgingly Clary does. They've come to a stop, outside the Institute in the chilly air silvered by the moon. "I don't want anyone to think I'm kidnapping you or something."

"Well maybe if you wouldn't _drag me_ I wouldn't look like I'm being kidnapped. I've heard about this thing people have been doing lately called walking; it seems like a handy skill to keep on the back burner for times like these. Besides, why don't you just glamour us?"

Her brother pinches his nose and inhales deeply, and Clary smirks. She wouldn't act so annoying for anyone else, but Jonathan is fun to aggravate...as long as one knows the limits.

"I don't have a stele, and neither do you. Fine. You want to walk? Let's walk." Jonathan extends an arm to her, and Clary's eyes widen in surprise. He catches her expression.

"What? We're just siblings, taking a stroll in 2 am Manhattan."

She snorts. "Oh, yeah, we'll blend right in with all the others." But she takes his arm nevertheless, and they proceed down the street at a much calmer pace.

"See?" Clary says. "Nobody's giving us a second glance."

"They're all drunk."

"But are we attracting attention?"

He rolls his eyes. "Touché."

They arrive at Central Park and walk in the gates, right up to a lake within the area. Clary marvels at the contrast of this little haven of nature within one of the biggest cities in the world. Valentine never took her to New York; claimed all his Circle connections there had betrayed him save one.

"How is a lake going to fix my arm, Jonathan?" She asks.

"You'll see." And then, out of the blue, he calls out across the lake: "Mater, mea invoco responde."

Clary frowns. "'Mother, answer my summons'? Jonathan, our mother is dead."

"Yours is." Her brother grins savagely as the water begins to ripple, as if something was emerging from the depths. "But mine's not."


	26. Chapter 26

The water keeps rippling, but now Clary watches it with a vague sort of terror. She pulls her arm away from Jonathan, but he yanks her back.

"Jon, come on. Let me go."

"This is for your own good, Clary." He grabs both her shoulders and Clary winces as his fingers dig into her injured arm.

She can't fight against him. She has no choice but to remain in his grasp, forced to stare at the horror emerging from the lake.

And thus it rises. Clary is reminded of the Lady of the Lake from the mundane texts Valentine had made her read, when she sees the water surface finally part for a female humanoid figure about four times the size of a normal human. But the similarities between the mythic legend and this very real nightmare stop there. The woman is completely naked and covered only by her long, black hair, revealing her skinniness to the point of emaciation. Her bones jut out through almost translucent skin, visibly popping against each other as she rises, feet firmly planted on top of the rippling water.

Clary's instinct is to look away from the woman's nudity, but she's so petrified of the entity the thought doesn't go past her subconscious. And somehow, it seems almost ridiculous to look away, in the same way you would chastise a mountain or a tree for not wearing clothes.

"Mother." Jonathan straightens but doesn't relax his grip on Clary. "Thank you for answering me. I know you must be busy."

She snarls, revealing her toothless, utterly black mouth. "Your human civilities are lost on me, child. Tell me why I am here before I show you why I am the mother of demons."

Clary sucks in a breath. "L-Lilith."

With that shakily-spoken word, the puzzle pieces click into place. Valentine injected Jonathan with demon blood while he was in the womb, so it would have a lifelong effect. But to get that potency...who better than Lilith, the mother of all demons, to spill her blood?

And that was why he kept calling her Mother. Lilith is the mother of his demonic side, everything bad in him. Clary's fear for the monster in the lake melts away, leaving room for hate to coil its way in. Because of this demon, her brother is in constant agony. Because of this demon, Jonathan has never known love from his father. Because of this _bitch_ -

"Rather slow today, are we?" Lilith purrs at Clary, seemingly just noticing her for the first time.

"That is my sister, Mother. You will not ridicule her."

She cocks her head. "Not of my blood."

"No. She is the favor I must call upon you for." He gently holds up Clary's lame arm as if he hadn't been gripping it with bone-shattering intensity mere seconds ago. "Her arm was mangled by a strange demon even I'd never seen before. There is surely no better person to heal it than yourself."

Lilith smiles, slowly, and the sight of it makes Clary feel she's on the verge of vomiting. As her mouth opens a thick black liquid pours out, dribbling down her chin and into the lake. Demon ichor. "Your favor will come with a price."

Jonathan smiles. "When does it not, Mother?"

So fast her eyes barely catch the movement, Lilith snaps her bony fingers, the sound the last sensation Clary feels vibrating in her bones before black slams over her vision and she passes out.

Jonathan stops breathing as he sees his sister crumple, and without thought rushes over to her, heedless of his mother's cruel gaze.

"Idiot. She is asleep." Lilith says as Jonathan exhales in relief, having found her pulse. "I did you a favor. You wouldn't want her to hear what you must promise."

"It doesn't matter, anyways," Jonathan replies bitterly. "She already knows about me."

The woman raises an eyebrow. "You would rather her be awake?"

"I never said that."

She snarls, and he hastily mutters an apology for his impudence.

"What do you ask of me, Lilith?"

Lilith smiles, though her black eyes still glitter with malice. She thrusts a finger a Clary, so small and pale on the cold wet grass. Even her hair appears to have lost its vibrance. "On her death day, before her spirit leaves this Earth, her soul must be bound to me for three nights."

Jonathan's eyes widen. Of all the things..."No. A broken arm is not worth that."

"Is it not? A mere three days is too cruel for the betterment of an entire life?"

Jonathan hesitates. Lilith begins to sink back into the lake, the water curling around her thin legs like black serpents. "Farewell, my son."

He grits his teeth. Damn her. "Wait."


End file.
